


Empires Fall, but Not Us

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Asthmatic Steve Rogers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Mind Control, Space Nerd Bucky Barnes, Team as Family, canon-typical angst, extremely brief mention of rec drug use by no-name minor characters, minor (Hydra) character deaths (non-graphic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 02:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19164064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: When Steve was ten, he met a boy with a clockwork heart.A cyberpunk tale of friendship, love, loss, and reunion; framed by the battle to bring hope and joy back to a City drowning under Hydra's rule.





	Empires Fall, but Not Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [djchika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/djchika/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Падут империи, но мы устоим](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266795) by [Christoph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christoph/pseuds/Christoph), [fandomStarbucks2019](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomStarbucks2019/pseuds/fandomStarbucks2019)



> I loved [DJchika's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/djchika) art submission for the RBB this year and thought there was so much potential there for a story. While there were a lot of pieces I adored, in the days between previews and claims, I couldn't get this one out of my head. It ended up being my first choice, and while it's been a bumpy ride at times, and while the original ideas morphed into something different, I'm still so happy I picked it and that we ended up with a story we both love. 
> 
> Thank you for being so patient with me through everything, Deej. <3
> 
> And also a huge thank you to my two excellent beta readers, [sweetdisaster613](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdisaster613) and [Ariel_Lane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Lane). Thank you both for being so thorough.

  
  
When Steve was ten, he met a boy with a clockwork heart. He glimpsed him long before they ever met—a flash of unruly brown curls when the nurse bypassed Steve’s bed and slipped through the curtain dividing the hospital room. What struck Steve the most was how sick the boy looked, his face thin and hollow with deep half moons under his eyes.

Steve was no stranger to being sick. When he and his ma still lived in the Outlands, Steve had been sick all the time, coughing and hacking and dizzy with fever. Sometimes he was so sick that his ma called in Reverend Lisa from the ramshackle church two miles due east just in case. She’d pray for Steve’s health and his immortal soul all in one go. Steve never much believed anyone was listening, but it made Ma and Miss Lisa feel better and, well, he figured it couldn’t hurt.

Of course Steve was sick in other ways too, even when he wasn’t _sick_ sick. He bled a lot when he scrapped with the other kids in the neighborhood; his lungs sometimes seized up and made him feel like he was suffocating in the bad air they wouldn’t blow out; one of his ears only caught half of what went in it; and the minute he started growing, his back started twisting every which way.

His back was why he was in the medical center with the brown-haired boy. Steve had had his first checkup with City doctors a few months after his mother moved them in, walking them through the sprawling Eastern Border with one bag of clothes each and a single photo of Steve’s father—a water carrier who died back in the Outland resource wars. She’d needed to catch Steve a few times during that long walk to their new home. His back was so crooked that sometimes he just fell right over. And if it wasn’t that, it was pain in his hips so bad that he cried even when he didn’t wanna.

Those first City doctors had called his case “extremely severe” and recommended treatment right away. They’d shown Steve pictures of the moving rods they’d put in, explained about the nanites that would assess them and send messages to the mechanisms that would make them shift and move. He had to admit the idea of some little tiny robots straightening out his twisted-up spine was pretty neat. Maybe the boy on the other side of the curtain had some little robots too.

Steve figured he must, because when he glimpsed him again a few days later, he caught the smallest smile on his face. The boy still had more shadows than someone oughta, but the circles under his eyes were dimmer, like those shadows were being cast by something far away. Steve smiled back before the nurse let the curtain fall back into place.

A few days later, they met properly, the boy slipping out from behind the curtain, trailing a tall IV stand behind him. He took the visitor’s seat by Steve’s bed.

“What ya in for, pal?” the boy asked, his socked feet swinging where they didn’t quite touch the floor. He rubbed tiredly at one of his deep-set eyes but leveled Steve with an easy smile.

“My back went like this real bad.” Steve raised his hand in the air and waved it to and fro like a rattler slithering across Outland sand. “What about you?”

“Me? They gave me a new ticker.” The boy reached for the opening in his hospital gown, grasping for the ties at the back of his neck and tugging them loose. He let the fabric slide off his boney shoulders, revealing a crisscrossed line of stitches down the center of his chest, broken in the middle by a small digital clock counting down—57:18:28:05… 04… 03…

“What happens when it gets to zero?” Steve asked, wide-eyed. Once while out looking for scrap with his neighbor Arnie, Steve had found a dusty set of wind-up teeth. He’d turned the dial and watched it spin, the teeth chattering and chattering and then, when the dial stopped moving: nothing. Would something like that happen to the boy? He seemed too nice to never get to grow up. When would he ever stay up as late as he wanted and have nothing but sweets for dinner? When would he find a nice person to marry and maybe have kids with?

“There’s medicine in it so my body don’t reject it,” the boy said, tapping on the little clock. “Doc Z said this just lets everybody know when they gotta put in more.”

Steve went wide-eyed again.

“What if it did? Reject it?”

“I reckon it’d push it right out. Mail through a slot. _Whoosh_.” The boy gestured, one hand sliding beneath the other and then right on past. “No more ticker. Then I guess I…” The boy dragged a finger across his throat.

Steve already didn’t care much for that idea at all.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“A little. Does yours? Did they give you a new back? Can I see?”

“No, they just put a bunch of metal in it and stuff.”

The boy’s eyes lit up.

“That’s so cool. Hey, you think if you got real close to a big magnet that you’d stick right to it? I’m Bucky by the way. Bucky Barnes.” The boy hopped down off the chair and walked over to the bed, extending his hand. Steve didn’t take it, too preoccupied by the completely feasible question.

“How big is the magnet?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Like this?” Bucky spread his arms wide and winced before bringing them just a little closer together.

“Shoot, maybe it would,” Steve said. Steve and his ma had passed the Eastside Waste Facility on that long first walk into the City. He could easily picture the huge disc-like magnet moving over rows and rows of garbage, picking out metal for recycling and reuse.

From there, it wasn’t hard to imagine being suspended up high—a bird frozen mid-flight. It could be fun even.

“I’m Steve. Rogers.”

“Well, Steve Rogers, I reckon when you and I get out of here, we’ll have to find us a real big magnet.”

“You know, Bucky Barnes, I think we just might.”

* * *

Within two days, Bucky had sweet talked the nurses into leaving the curtain open so he and Steve could talk. It was that, Bucky proposed, or he’d just keep getting out of bed to sit next to Steve’s like he wasn’t supposed to. The nurses relented, and the blue curtain stayed nestled against the wall except for at night when the third shift nurse forced it shut, knowing full well if they didn’t, the two boys would chitchat well past their recovery-imposed bedtimes.

It was because of that oft-open curtain and a little planning on their boys’ parts that Sarah Rogers met Freddie Barnes for the first time. Steve listened with a big smile while his ma told Freddie that her and Steve’s apartment was right around the corner from theirs, that Bucky was welcome anytime, and that when Steve had recovered enough to leave the apartment, he was allowed to hang around with Bucky anytime he liked.

And that’s exactly what Steve did. They never did go find that big magnet like Bucky had suggested, but they ran what had to be the whole length of the City. They flew kites in the wind coming off the southern coast; they ate tacos and fried pies from the folks who sold them on the sidewalks; and they swam in the cool waters of the City Reservoir in the heat of summer, Bucky’s little ticking clock framed by summer-kissed skin—10:05:47:17… 16… 15…

Their favorite place was Illumination Park, a large swath of land in the center of the City. They played there in the daytime when the artificial trees looked like simple skeletons, running and skipping across sidewalks and grass, eating ice pops and petting every dog they came across. And they played there just after sundown when the lights were all on, the two of them hanging upside-down from manmade branches like astronauts suspended among so many stars.

“You think it’s this bright up there?” Bucky asked one day, pointing at the sky above, a vast swath of black, all its stars hidden by the brightness of the City.

“You could see them all where I grew up,” Steve said. “’Specially up on the mountains away from the fires.”

“How many are there?” Bucky asked, his little mop of curls pulled toward the ground by gravity, wavy tendrils reaching down for the grass below.

“A lot more than there are lights in this park.”

“You think you could show me someday?” Bucky asked.

“Someday when I don’t need the metal in my back no more, we’ll use it to build a spaceship.”

“Even better.” Bucky smiled, and something in Steve fluttered. He smiled back and kept swinging until all the blood finished rushing to his head and he had no choice but to get down. Bucky could always go a little longer, and Steve laid on the grass below him and waited.

“Hot dogs?” Bucky asked, when he finally dismounted, patting dust off the backs of his knees.

“Hot dogs.” Steve nodded.

They took off running.

* * *

With his back against the wall, Steve stood his ground in the alley, fists held high. He’d seen the other boy before, both at school and around the neighborhood. But otherwise, he was a stranger. A stranger with fists the size of Steve’s feet.

Steve had been growing in size since he and his ma first arrived in the City, where people ate when they were supposed to and didn’t have to skip meals just because there wasn’t anything to be had. These days, he was a far cry from that scrawny boy who met Bucky over five years ago. Even so, this other boy stood a good head taller than him.

“Just swear you’re gonna apologize to Dottie for what you said about her, and I’ll let you go,” Steve said, nervously bringing his fists up higher.

The boy laughed and pushed Steve to the pavement.

“You’re such a loser, Rogers, you and your dumb ugly boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Steve bit back, maybe a little too quickly. There’d been a time when he denied his feelings vehemently in little internal back-alley scraps. But that time had passed, and he couldn’t deny, not to himself anyway, the fact that sometimes when Bucky smiled at him, Steve’s real flesh-and-blood heart pittered and pattered and hoped maybe Bucky’s clockwork ticker was doing the same.

It wasn’t though. Bucky had already gone out with half the girls in the neighborhood and had never gone out with anyone of any other gender, not that Steve knew about anyhow.

And if Bucky went out with someone, Steve always knew about it. Ergo…

“Don’t let me catch you around here no more.” The boy gave Steve a swift kick in the gut and spat on him. Then he was gone.

With just a skinned knee and elbow on top of his hurt pride, Steve picked himself up off the pavement and went to meet Bucky at their usual spot.

“Hell, Steve, who’d you piss off?” Bucky asked, already in a booth at the little ice cream parlor on the corner. He slid Steve’s milkshake across the linoleum tabletop. “That was a stupid question. Who pissed off _you_?”

“Guy was telling everyone he’s got pics of Dottie Simpson in her underwear and that he’d show ‘em for the right price.”

“You know I’d back you up in these fights, right? You don’t always gotta get your ass kicked.”

“I had him on the ropes, Buck.”

“Sure you did.” Bucky slurped another sip, glancing at the clock. He’d gotten a job at the shop, just a couple hours in the afternoons when the after-work rush hit. It wasn’t much, but it meant extra money for all those dates he went on. And for street food. Plus, it got him and Steve free ice cream three days a week, so Steve couldn’t exactly complain, even if it did cut into their friend time some.

“You haven’t gone yet?” Steve asked, nodding at the place on Bucky’s chest where the little clock protruded just so, a rectangular shape visible through Bucky’s plain white tee. The fabric was thin enough to make out the 01 at the very beginning.

“I think you worry about this damn thing even more than Ma.” Bucky gave it a tap, tap, tap with his index finger.

“Well, you dying on me would really kill the mood around here, Buck,” Steve said. “Besides, where would I get free strawberry shakes?”

Bucky’s smiles were a lot like those first rays of sunshine after a really long rain. They were bright and warm and made Steve wanna stop everything he was doing just to bask in them as long as they were around. Didn’t matter that Bucky smiled easily, dozens upon dozens of times a day. Steve never got tired of them and never would.

Steve’s ma had quietly accused him of having a little crush a year or so ago. Steve figured there wasn’t nothing little about it, but he tried his best not to argue with his ma. She had enough on her plate between school and her student training at the medical center. Besides, there were plenty of better people to argue with around the City. Or worse people depending on how you looked at it.

“Seeing Doc Z in the morning, Stevie. Don’t worry about me. Worry about what your Ma’s gonna say when she sees that elbow of yours.”

“Shit.”

“Finish your milkshake and I’ll patch you up in the back before I clock in.”

Hours later, Steve tried his best not to think about the featherlight touch of Bucky’s fingers softly cleaning the blood off his skin. He tried not to think about the way his nerves responded to those same fingers gently applying a layer of antibiotic because, “You dying would really kill the mood around here too, pal.” He tried not to fixate on the feeling of Bucky smoothing down the edges of the bandages and how his touch had lingered there on Steve’s forearm before he drew his hands back.

He tried and tried and tried… and failed.

* * *

Steve turned sixteen on the hottest day of the year. There’d been a sort of party at the City Reservoir, his little ragtag group of friends all gathered, swimming and eating sandwiches and popsicles from the pushcart vendors making the rounds.

After, it was just him and Bucky, drip-drying while they slinked back through balmy sidewalks to the ice cream place. Bucky had a better job now as a math tutor, one that saw him handing Steve a little package wrapped in plain blue paper before he hopped up to get them both a shake.

Steve had a job too, sweeping up at some tech factory. He didn’t really understand all of what they made and it didn’t matter. He’d gotten Bucky the books he wanted for his seventeenth, had gotten that little thrill of seeing Bucky beam brighter than usual. It was worth it even when he had to clean the bathrooms.

“One strawberry with the works because today’s special,” Bucky said, setting the glass down in front of Steve. He nodded at the present. “You could’ve opened it without me.” 

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“The fun’s getting the present, Stevie.”

Steve pretended to contemplate that, screwing up his face.

“I don’t think that’s right, but okay.”

“Just open it, you punk.”

Steve took a sip of his milkshake and then flipped the package over to find a seam, slipping his finger underneath and popping the tape here and there until he could wiggle the contents free: a single sketchbook with thick cream-colored paper and a set of pastels. Steve had had his eyes on both of these things at the art supply shop for ages, the price tag making him hesitate every time he thought about actually getting them.

He still had sketchbooks with empty pages at home, even if this one was better and would hold up to more abuse. He could keep working in charcoals too. He didn’t necessarily need color, especially since he couldn’t tell the difference between red and green, something he’d never gotten corrected because it was considered an optional procedure, and he knew his ma didn’t have that kind of money.

He picked up the blue pastel and inspected it closely, glancing up at Bucky’s eyes and back down to where he turned it over in his fingers.

“Buck, this is too much.”

Bucky just smiled softly. “Finish your milkshake Steve.”

They went for a walk after, the sketchbook and case of pastels tucked securely against Steve’s side. The day had cooled enough that it was bearable under the black night sky, and they wove through brick and steel toward Illumination Park.

They never hung upside-down anymore, opting instead for sprawling on the grass beneath a copse of light trees and staring up.

“I still wanna see them someday,” Bucky said, his body close enough that Steve could feel the warmth coming off his skin. “I know there’s a reason nobody moves back to the Outlands if they manage to move in, but I don’t think I’d mind it out there just long enough to see the stars.”

Steve looked over and vowed to memorize the way the lights all looked reflecting in Bucky’s eyes.

“I’ll go with you so you know who and where to avoid.”

“I’m just fine with avoiding everybody in the world who ain’t you, Stevie.”

“Come on, Buck, we all know that’s not true. What about the fella who sells the naan tacos over by the river?” Steve asked.

Bucky smiled, but it looked troubled. Steve watched the lights in Bucky’s eyes shift as he rolled over onto his side, the buttons on his shirt splitting open a bit, exposing that same ticking heart he’d had the day they first met. Steve could only make out one of the numbers, but as much as he tended to worry, it wasn’t important. He reached across the grass to smooth the shirt back into place, his fingertips lingering over the diffused red glow.

Steve knew he should say something. Across from him, Bucky laid on his side staring at him, his chest rising and falling with gentle breeze breaths. Steve didn’t move his hand, didn’t want to, maybe couldn’t.

“Buck, do you ever think-” He stopped. He couldn’t complete that thought, not without saying everything that he’d gone so long without saying at all.

“Yes,” Bucky said back. “All the time, Steve.”

“I didn’t even finish the question.”

Bucky moved his hand to rest on top of Steve’s, the artificial heart pumping away somewhere below. Softly, he moved Steve’s hand to the back of his neck.

“Thing is, you don’t have to,” Bucky said, and with so many bees buzzing in his veins, Steve leaned across the space between them and pressed their lips together.

“I’ll never have a birthday as good as this one,” Steve said, his forehead and nose touching Bucky’s, their breaths mingling.

“I’m not going anywhere, Steve. Promise.”

But promises were only as good as the world they were made in.

Two days later, the City erupted into chaos. Two days later, Steve went to Bucky’s apartment building in a frantic search and found nothing but rubble in its place.

* * *

The new recruit came with wings and clockwork lungs. 

“I did air support for the medical center before all this. Those bastards shot down my partner.”

 Steve didn’t ask about the partner, about what he’d meant. Sam’s face said enough.

“How much time do you have left?” Steve asked, nodding at the two small rectangles protruding through the fabric on either side of Sam’s chest. Hydra’s first move had been the organs, putting enough of the City onto a schedule that they could use them as ransom when the time came. They claimed it offered people freedom, these healthy ticking organs. No need for the oral cocktail that had come with transplants in the past. No worry about your donated lungs breaking down. Or so they said.

But it wasn’t freedom; it was fear. Now that they were in control, they claimed the organs were optional surgeries. The anti-rejection drugs cost a fortune—can’t afford it? Don’t get the organs. (Not that old-fashioned transplants were any more cost-effective if you could even find a doctor willing to do one.)

Beyond the cost of the drugs themselves, any move against Hydra risked being placed on the do-not-refill list. Hydra had killed thousands during their takeover of the City, but they’d indirectly killed thousands more over the years by making life prohibitively expensive.

Sometimes Steve thought it was a good thing that Bucky didn’t survive, that he didn’t have to either give in or live in constant fear the way people like Sam did.

Sam pulled his shirt up his chest and showed Steve the two different clocks: 01:07:15:28… 27… 26… and 00:00:05:39… 38… 37… 

“You had a lot of confidence in this interview,” Steve said.

“Bit of a gamble. But it’s not instantaneous. Most Timeless make it a couple weeks, give or take. Immune systems take time to do their thing.”

“Here,” Steve said, pulling a syringe out of the cooler by his feet. He was an expert at this by now, easily pulling loose the clock face to expose the needle port. Liquid in, reset button pressed, clock face back on—59:23:59:57… 56… 55…

He did the other side next, accounting for the drugs that remained inside, saving that day and change for someone who might need it more.

“I keep this locked when we bring in somebody new. Just until I know I can trust them.” Steve patted the cooler lid. “Once that happens, take what you need. We try to sweep Illumination once a week and top people off, but if you see somebody who needs saving, you don’t need my permission.”

“Except right now I kinda do,” Sam teased with a smile.

“Except right now you kinda do.” Steve smiled back. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

He took Sam through the side door into the main part of their DIY headquarters.

“That’s Natasha over there sparring with Sharon. Sharon’s our source too. When she’s not here, she works as a nurse.” Steve pointed to the two women on the mats, both of them jabbing at each other with taped up fists.

“That’s Fury and Carol.” Steve pointed at the two figures bent low over the what they called the war table. “Fury was police commissioner pre-Hydra. Carol did air support for police and fire, same flight system that you used. But she’s great with tech too. Can hack her way into anything.”

“Almost seems like you don’t need me at all,” Sam said, nodding at Carol when she looked up.

“You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t,” Steve said, moving on. “In there’s our hospital room. And that closet over there is weapons storage. And over here is-”

“Alexander Pierce.” Pierce stood up from the table in the makeshift kitchen and extended his hand. “You must be Wilson.”

“Mr. Mayor,” Sam said, shaking his hand firmly.

“I’m not the mayor anymore,” Pierce said.

“All due respect sir, I sure as hell didn’t vote for Schmidt. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still the mayor until we have a proper election again.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that.” Pierce smiled. “Can’t say I miss the stress, but given the alternatives.”

“We’ll get you back in that office,” Steve said.

“Yes we will,” Sam agreed. Pierce raised a glass of powdered milk in Sam’s direction.

“So what’s the plan?” Sam asked, and Steve jerked his head back toward the war table, walking over with Sam at his heels.

“Wanna fill him in?” Steve asked. Fury stood up straighter.

“Sure. We’ve got a woman whose team could supply the whole City with anti-rejection medication,” Fury said. “We just have to get her the recipe. After that, it’s just a simple matter of a coup and full government overhaul. Easy enough.”

“Unfortunately Hydra only stores the anti-rejection formula at their manufacturing facility,” Carol said. “I’ve looked everywhere for it and that seems to be the consensus.” Carol picked up the nearest tablet and started pushing buttons, shaking her head to flop her blonde mohawk up out of her face. She turned the screen back around, a set of blueprints visible, the roof access point circled in red. “So Wilson, we heard you could still fly.”

* * *

A rock, paper, scissors game decided who went in alongside Steve, Sam, and Carol. He felt safe enough in Sam’s arms despite having just met him, the two of them rocketing through buildings of brick and glass and metal, flying low enough that Hydra’s systems couldn’t pick them up. Alongside them, Carol flew with Natasha wrapped up in her arms.

Steve rolled into the landing the way Natasha taught him, his boots skidding in the rooftop gravel as he came to a stop. Two mechanical whooshes signaled Sam and Carol touching down behind him, their wings retracting.

“Pulling up the latest door code,” Carol said, producing a palm-sized tablet from somewhere within her trench coat—dark leather shades of blue and red with just a hint of yellow stitching if you were close enough to see it. It made Steve’s black leather duster look plain in comparison, though he had stitched a subtle City shield onto the left arm, a reminder of the past and future he was fighting for. 

Carol stepped forward and typed in a long string of numbers with a series of tiny beeps. A click, and the door opened right up on a simple concrete stairwell. Steve checked his comms.

“Sharon, Fury, are you in position?” Steve asked. Natasha and Carol had taken a test flight on a moonless night last week, taking advantage of the shadows to scope out possible sniper nests. Fury and Sharon were both supposed to be in one.

“Locked and loaded, Cap. Fuck Hydra,” Fury said.

“Hear, hear.” Carol stepped inside the doorway, gun at eye level.

 “Eyes on targets,” Sharon confirmed. Steve followed Carol in, pistol in one hand and electric rod in the other.

On the first landing, they all stopped, crouching low to avoid the tiny slit windows in the doors to either side. 

“Carol, where are we?” Steve whispered. Natasha automatically moved to cover Carol when she holstered her gun and withdrew the tablet again.

“This floor’s all bullshit. We keep moving.”

“You heard the Captain,” Steve said. Their favorite joke. Carol smirked back at him.

On the next landing, she stopped them.

“There’s labs on either side,” she said, pointing to both doors leading off the stairwell. “There’s nothing to indicate which one would have what we’re looking for. Nat with me, Wilson with you?”

“Works for me,” Steve said. “Sam?”

“On your left, Cap.”

The hallway looked clear enough through the slit window, so they stepped through. Only one set of doors to the right, the hallway itself pressed against one side of the building, all windows and the pale indigo glow of a nearly-set sun.

“Cap, I’ve got eyes on you and Wilson,” Fury said.

“Same on Nat and Carol,” Sharon said.

“Both of you just give us a heads up if you see anyone coming.” Steve flattened himself against the wall by the first door and slowly shifted to look through the small window. “Looks like one big open room since they don’t have the dividers drawn. Carol wasn’t sure.”

“How many?” Sam asked.

“Seven, three armed. But I can’t see the whole room.”

Sam nodded and crouched down, moving past Steve and the middle door all the way to the end of the hall. He approached the door there cautiously before peering inside.

“How far can you see?” Sam asked, his voice low over the comms.

“Mid-room, second divider.”

“Four more on this end, two armed,” Sam said. “We both take two armed dudes each and fight over the other?”

“We both take four _unarmed_ guys each and we fight over the…?” Steve trailed off.

Sam threw him a smile from the end of the hall. Steve held up five fingers and used them to count down. When he held up his fist, they both turned the knobs and stepped into the lab.

Four pops before any of the armed men could even draw. Five and six pops when they both took out the odd one together.

“Dead or alive on these assholes?” Sam asked, the nearest woman in a white coat going wide-eyed.

“First three to surrender get to live.”

Two people dropped to their knees immediately, hands on their heads.

“Get up, you idiots. Hydra doesn’t-” The man gurgled the rest, red spilling over the white of his coat. Sam wiped the knife on his leg.

“Man, shut the hell up.” Sam scowled. “Anyone else have anything stupid to say?”

Another person dropped, hands held high. Two more hit the floor, foaming at the mouth.

“The hell?”

“Cyanide capsules,” Steve said, aiming his gun at a man inching closer and closer to a shelf full of chemicals. He didn’t bother with a verbal warning. “Okay, I know I said three, but if anyone else is feeling a little remorseful about their life choices, here’s your shot.”

No one took it. Steve nodded at Sam. They did what had to be done as quickly as possible.

“What do you want?” a woman asked. “Drugs? There’s a whole cabinet of drugs—anti-rejection, different nanite formulas.”

“Recreational too,” a man added, sizing Steve up. “You look like a guy who could use a vacation.”

“She got a lot closer than you did,” Steve said to the man. “What we want is the recipe. Anti-rejection.”

“It’s not fucking chocolate-chip cookies,” the man said. “You can’t just make it in your goddamned kitchen.”

Steve squatted low, meeting him eye-to-eye. He rested his gun on his thigh—visible and close enough to use it, but pointed away. For now.

“You know, I first came to this City when I was ten,” Steve said. “I wasn’t born here like you all probably were. Those first ten years, I spent sick, scraping by in the Outlands just to make it another day. Ma was real smart. If she hadn’t been, well, I’d probably still be out there if I wasn’t dead by now. But she got into one of the medical relocation programs, went to school and trained as a nurse in that big medical center downtown. I had my first surgery there too, met what had to be one of the first folks with a Zola Organ. We were friends for a long time, me and him, and I remember how much that ticking clock used to scare me even when it wasn’t hard to get the drugs. Of course, he died anyhow. Sometime during the riots when Hydra took over the City—no funeral, no grave to visit, no one leaving flowers for him. Then I lost my ma a few years later. See, she’d been convinced to get a set of lungs when she got sick—all those years in the Outlands had ruined them. The fires, you know. Living out there so long also meant she’d also seen enough of what life was like under the kind of men who rule this City now. When Hydra took over, she refused to be part of it. She was one of the first Timeless to die under the new regime.”

The man blinked, his eyes flicking down to Steve’s gun.

“See, my point is,” Steve said, “that Hydra has a habit of taking everyone I love from me, and I don’t have a lot of patience for anyone who serves it. So you can either give me what I asked for and spend the rest of your life thinking about the cost of what you’ve helped Hydra do. Or I can go ahead and send you on for cosmic judgement or whatever the fuck comes after all this. Your choice.”

“I can show you,” the woman blurted, getting up off the floor. Steve jerked his head toward the two people still kneeling on the tile, and Sam stepped a hair closer, his gun still at the ready.

“We keep it on here,” she said, stopping in front of a bank of monitors. It seemed almost anti-climactic when she handed Steve a handheld, the files loaded right onto it.

“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely.

Steve pocketed the device.

“You knew what you were doing from the beginning,” Steve said. “Doesn’t matter why you chose it. You did.”

He pulled a set of large zip ties from the inner pockets of his trench and bound her wrists before strapping her to one of the lab tables. He and Sam did the same to the other two.

“Carol, Nat, report,” Steve said.

“Took down five hostiles. No anti-rejection meds here, but we did get you an inhaler, Steve,” Nat said.

“Copy and thank you. We’ve got it.” Steve headed for the door, turning back to the three chemists.

“The reverend who used to come pray over me always said that even the darkest of souls can be redeemed. I don’t really believe that’s true for people like you,” Steve said. “That said, if there’s one thing I know about fascists, it’s that this is how it always ends.” Steve gestured to the bodies on the floor. “Tough or not, you’ve got a choice. It won’t undo what you’ve done, and I doubt anyone will give you any kind of forgiveness—I sure as hell won’t—but it might save you from the bottom of the brick pile when this regime goes tumbling. And it will.”

Next to him, Sam nodded. Together, the two of them stepped back out into the hallway.

“Rendezvous back at the start,” Steve said into his comms, shutting the lab door behind him. He and Sam set off toward the stairs, Fury and Sharon maintaining visual contact as long as possible.

Up into the air again, flying low between the buildings, the darkness of the late autumn evening mostly shielding them from view. Carol and Sam dropped them onto the street a few blocks from HQ, their wings retracting as they fell into stride with Steve and Nat.

“So you got it?” Carol asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got it right here,” Steve said, patting one of his pockets. “You and Fury can set up a meeting for the hand-off.”

Carol smiled.

“We’re almost there,” she said.

“It’s been a long time coming.” Steve rounded the corner of the alley that led back to HQ. “But we’ve still got a way to- _oh_.”

The sound a bullet made connecting with flesh was very specific and only audible to those in very close vicinity to a target. It was a sort of muted thwack, sometimes lost beneath the crack of the shot depending on the shooter’s distance, the air quality, and the space surrounding the scene.

Steve heard both the impact and the crack before he felt it, the sound registering before the feeling of it slamming into his thigh, making his leg buckle beneath him.

“Shit!”

“Wings up, Wilson.”

The clanging of bullets on metal—Sam and Carol both crouched low, getting as much of their bodies behind the wings as they could. Nat did her best to keep Steve upright but still behind their makeshift shields. The nerves in Steve’s legs screamed.

“Chase that adrenaline, Steve,” Carol said. “Stay down, everyone. Slow and steady to the door.”

They took it step after agonizing step. Until the bullets stopped.

“Why did he stop shooting?” Sam asked, head twisting back as though he could somehow see through the wall of wings. “Is he reloading? What the fuck is he doing?”

“On task, Wilson,” Carol said. “Complete the mission.”

They kept stepping. Until something grabbed the side of one of Sam’s wings and wrenched it backwards, violently tearing it from the pack and tossing it to the side.

“Shit! Shit! What the fuck!”

Steve bolted upright, gun flying up to-

A metal hand caught the barrel, and Steve stared straight into the eyes of the man who shot him—blue rimmed with messy charcoal black. A mask covered the bottom half of his face, lank dark hair framing the whole picture and curling over the collar of his trench coat, a long black number with a ladder of straps. The man’s metal arm nearly blended into the leather, its plates a matte black, but the space between the black glowed green. On his shoulder, someone had painted the many-tentacled skull of Hydra in that same tone.

Steve lashed out with his left fist, catching the man in the throat. He coughed and stumbled backwards, and Steve stumbled with him, a boat drifting in the wake of a bigger ship. Steve’s leg tried to buckle again, and he fell on his good knee to catch his breath. With impeccable timing, Sam surged forward, a shock rod in one hand and a knife in the other.

A single kick from the stranger sent Sam flying backwards. Carol growled low, shooting up on her wings and spiraling at him. A direct hit from her saw the masked man shooting across the alley into the brick wall on the other side. He bounced off of it and hit the asphalt face-down, hair flying up to reveal a black box attached to the back of his neck. Behind Steve, Nat gasped.

Steve gasped too when the man stood up, the mask knocked loose by the impact. Seeing his face was like being shot all over again, a silent bullet slamming into Steve’s chest and forcing all the air out of his lungs.

The eyes—Steve should’ve recognized them all along. Even without the nose and jawline to match. His hand went to his side, resting over the pocket where he kept one of the only drawings of him he’d done before-

“Bucky?” Steve breathed, something in him cracking apart. He would’ve fought Hydra anyway. It was the right thing to do even if they hadn’t stolen Ma and Bucky. But that hadn’t stopped loss from being fuel to his fire, every time he saw the bodies of the Timeless, every time he thought of Bucky trapped in his apartment while it crumbled down around him.

So many years of thinking about what might have been, and his might-have-been had chosen to work for Hydra. Steve forced back a gag.

Across the alley, blue eyes narrowed into barely-there slits. Bucky raised his gun, the barrel pointed right at Steve.

He never got the shot off, Sam slamming into him from the side and tackling him to the asphalt. The gun fired, the bullet going wide and smashing into one of the walls sending brick dust scattering.

“Sam, hold him,” Natasha said, sprinting across the alley with shock rods in both hands. She pressed them both into Bucky’s neck. He groaned, a godawful pained sound like a wounded animal. Steve winced, the years falling away to the sound Bucky made when he fell out of one of the trees at the now-dim Illumination Park. It shouldn’t have felt that way. All Hydra and its ilk deserved was to hurt.

“I need him out cold!” Nat yelled.

Steve brought his hands up over his ears, turning away from it. It kept going, present and memory blurring together. Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice reminded him that disorientation was a symptom of blood loss. The thought slipped away as quickly as it came.

“Steve!”

“Steven!”

“Captain!”

Steve slammed back into the present, his eyes falling on the sight of everyone in his crew trying to hold Bucky down where he writhed and yelped in pain.

“You’ll kill him,” Steve said, limping across the alley. Then again, what did it matter if they did? Anyone else, Steve would put a bullet in him and save them all the trouble.

“If we don’t do this, he may as well be dead,” Nat said, her eyes flicking to the belt around Steve’s waist. He pulled a shock gun free, closed his eyes tight, and fired. Bucky fell blissfully silent.

“How did he take that much?” Sam asked, helping Nat turn him over.

“Right before missions, they pump their soldiers with enough adrenaline to kill a horse.” Nat parted the hair at the back of Bucky’s neck, finding the black box attached to his skin. With her knife, she pried a plate off the back, revealing a small number keypad.

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“Hacks into different parts of the brain and overwrites them. Not a fully accurate description, but in simple terms, it’s a mind control device.”

Steve exhaled a shaky breath.

“So Bucky’s not… He didn’t…”

“He’s like me, Steve,” Nat said, sweeping her hair up to show them eight sunken-in scars on the back of her neck. “He didn’t choose this.”

“How do we take it off?” Steve asked, already resolved to pry it off with his bare goddamned hands if he had to.

“Working on it,” Nat said.

“Steve.” Sam ripped off a large strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. He tied it tight around Steve’s leg, tugging on the knot to create pressure over the wound. Steve groaned through his teeth.

“Carol, you still have Zola’s access codes?” Nat asked.

“Yep.” Carol whipped out her handheld tablet, already tapping away. Steve panted through the pain in his thigh until his lungs started to ache. Until he had that very particular feeling like he couldn’t exhale and was just slowly filling up with CO2. Soon, he’d run out of room for good air and he’d-

“Look for deactivation codes,” Natasha said. “I remember him. They used to call him the winter soldier. See if there’s anything under that.”

“Uh, guys,” Sam said, looking over at where Steve sat wheezing. Steve had the very distinct feeling like all the years between when he lost Bucky and now had somehow settled onto his chest like concrete.

“Shit,” Nat patted her pockets and pulled out an inhaler, tossing it to Sam. “He’s needed a top off for a while.”

Sam pressed it to Steve’s lips and he inhaled the treatment, the nanites immediately setting to work. He kept wheezing, settling miserably back against the wall while he waited for them to do enough that the attack stopped.

“No ‘winter soldier’ or variation of,” Carol said.

“What about ‘Bucky’? That’s what you called him, right?” Nat turned to Steve, putting her hand on his arm to focus his attention. He jerked a nod.

“No Bucky here either,” Carol said.

“Steve, is there another name?” Nat asked.

Steve’s eyes blurred. He’d be fine when the nanites kicked in. He’d be fine when they got him inside. They all kept their own blood in storage for days like this, and Steve trusted his crew to get him patched up. He’d be okay. Bucky was-

“Steve, is there another name Bucky might be listed under?”

Bucky is alive and he needs you.

Focus.

“Barnes. James Barnes,” Steve wheezed.

“Check and mate, motherfuckers,” Carol said. “32557038.”

Natasha typed it in quickly with her pinky finger. The tiny metal arms anchoring the box to Bucky’s neck pulled loose, and she tugged the whole unit free, tucking it into her pocket.

“Sam, can you help Steve in? Carol and I will get this one.”

“Got him,” Sam said, slipping an arm under Steve’s armpit.

By the time Steve came to, a bandage wrapped around his thigh, he had no recollection of how they got inside.

“Steve?” a voice asked, quiet and hoarse. Slowly, Steve turned and looked into the eyes of Bucky Barnes for the first time in nine years.

* * *

Steve fell in and out of consciousness for the next several hours. He didn’t regain it for any significant amount of time until midday following the mission. Bucky was there when he woke up, sitting in a chair beside Steve’s bed, his knees drawn up to his chest, flesh and metal limbs wrapped around his shins. 

“Buck?” Steve asked, and Bucky unfurled like a flower reaching for the sun. He looked terrible, a lot like he had the first time Steve glimpsed him in the medical center all those years ago. Greasy hair hung limp around his face—no sign of his curls in sight. His skin was pallid, eyes red and red-rimmed. Where the black paint around his eyes had worn away, dark half-circles remained. And he was skinny again, all sharp angles and deep shadows.

Jesus though, he was still beautiful enough to knock something in Steve askew.

Steve shoved that thought back. Bucky didn’t need him going moon-eyed over him, not now and probably not for some time.

“I shot you,” Bucky said. He sounded miserable.

Steve shook his head. “That wasn’t you, Buck. But it’s all good now. I’ll live to fight another day.”

Silence for an indefinite amount of time.

“I’m still sorry. If I’d killed you, Steve, whenever that thing eventually came off of me, I wouldn’t have been able to-”

“But you didn’t. I’m right here. All two hundred and twenty pounds of me.”

“Two twenty?” Bucky rose an eyebrow.

“Okay drop the twenty.”

Bucky tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace.

“Other people weren’t as lucky,” Bucky said.

“That’s on Hydra, not you.”

More silence. Then softly,

“Steve, I don’t know what happened to my ma.”

“I looked for you when things went to shit. We’d just had that kiss. I was as in love with you as you can be with a fella at sixteen, and I didn’t wanna lose you. Your building was just gone, Buck.”

“I remember going in for a top up on this.” Bucky tapped his chest. “And Zola told me he needed me to try something important, that I’d save a lot of people if I helped him test it. He had the box in his hand, but I didn’t know what it was. Everything after that is training and killing and- She’s gotta be dead, right? You’d know if she wasn’t.”

“I thought you were dead too, and you’re not. We’ll make sure.”

“Mrs. Sarah?” Bucky asked.

“Went down fighting,” Steve said. “She couldn’t afford the refills anyway after the takeover. But she got put on the do-not-refill list for punching a Hydra Patrol officer in the face during a protest after he used an electric rod on a Timeless woman. She was real proud of that.”

“She used to say you got it from your dad—all those back-alley scraps—but I knew better.”

“I was always Sarah Rogers’ son.”

“You still are,” Bucky said.

“So are you.”

Bucky turned his head away from Steve and looked at the wall. On the back of his neck, Steve saw dried blood, left behind from the box.

“You haven’t let anyone look you over yet? Sharon? She’s the nurse.”

“She tried. The redhead too. And the guy with the wings. I couldn’t do it. I- Zola.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something, though what exactly he didn’t know, but Sharon stepped into the room, still in her work scrubs.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” She checked all of Steve’s vitals quickly, noting them on a legal pad.

“Buck said you tried to look him over.”

“I wanted to clean up the wound and see if there was any other damage from the fight or other-” Sharon swallowed. “Sam tried when it didn’t go well. Nat gave it a go with the neck—we thought maybe the common ground might help.”

“You think Sharon could try again, Buck?” Steve asked. “I’ll be here the whole time.”

Bucky nodded, but he was already shaking. Steve reached out, offering his hand for Bucky to take. He did. Gathering a few things, Sharon cautiously moved behind Bucky, who tipped his head forward, eyes never leaving Steve’s.

“I’m just gonna clean off the blood and sanitize it,” Sharon said, slowly swiping a bit of dampened cotton over the back of Bucky’s neck. He shuddered and squeezed Steve’s hand.

“You’re safe. You know me. You know I’d never hurt you or let anyone else hurt you.” Steve repeated these same three things over and over again until Sharon managed to tape a bandage onto Bucky’s nape.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Steve asked. “Be honest.”

“Nowhere that would need attention. Just some bruises.”  
  
“Does your arm ever need maintenance?”

Bucky looked at it and laughed joylessly.

“You know, I didn’t even need this thing. Zola just wanted to test it. Make the ‘fist of Hydra’ stronger. That’s what he told the other lab rats anyhow before he sawed the old one right off.”

Steve’s jaw clenched, his right hand balling into a fist around the sheets beneath him. Bucky met his eyes and looked away quickly.

“But it’s self-maintaining unless it sustains damage.” He flexed his fingers and the plates shifted over the glowing green.

“And your heart?” Steve asked, the words catching in his throat on the way out. “What’s the time left?”

Bucky’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t…”  The plates whirred again, shifting up then down in waves. “They always just…”

“Can you let me see?” Steve asked, and Bucky nodded slowly, his hand slipping out of Steve’s. He stood up, undoing strap after strap on the trench coat, as though it was the first time he’d ever had to take it off himself. Underneath, Hydra had given him nothing but a plain black shirt. Bucky tugged it up and over his head.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve said. Emotions overwhelmed him immediately—sadness, regret, guilt, and anger. It thickened in his gut, twisting and writhing like snakes before turning to cement and pulling everything inside of him down.

The ticking heart Bucky had had since Steve was ten was still there. But it wasn’t alone anymore. All around it were more clocks, all of them ticking away. There were newer models, their numbers crisp and clear; and there were older models, microscratches on their screens dulling the displays. The scars around them were different ages too. The one in the center of Bucky’s chest had nearly faded to white, while another was a freshly-healed pale pink. The rest of them fell everywhere between.

Worse still, the clock sitting right above Bucky’s left hip had about twenty minutes left. Another on his right side had already run out three hours ago, the numbers counting up now instead of down.

“Sharon,” Steve said.

She blinked out of her shock.

“I’m going,” she said.

“Buck, do you wanna come here?” Steve nodded to the space beside him. “You should bring the chair.”

Bucky did, scooting it up and plopping down. Steve flashed back to hospital gowns and swinging feet before leaning forward and popping the panels on the most precarious clocks. Sharon was back with syringes by then, passing them to Steve one by one while he topped Bucky off.

“I didn’t know,” Bucky said. “Hydra always did this. I haven’t had to worry about it in-”

Steve met his eyes, wishing more than anything that he could turn back time and undo all those years, wishing that he’d looked for Bucky instead of just accepting that he was gone. _Goddammit_ , he should have fucking looked.

“That’s okay. I can worry about it for you,” Steve said. “You always said I worried about it more than anybody anyway, so why stop now?”

The corners of Bucky’s mouth turned up, but his face twitched the whole time, his eyes welling.

“We’re close, Buck,” Steve said. “We’re close to taking them down. I know that doesn’t make it better, what they did to you, but we’re so fucking close.”

It was hours later—long after Sharon had gone—when Bucky looked at Steve and quietly said, “I want to help you do it.” Steve didn’t need to ask what he meant.

* * *

Steve stayed in the hospital room for the next week and a half. Over that time, the bullet wound went from a large gaping hole to a gnarled pink pucker. Bucky started to settle in as well. Nat came and pulled him out a few times to spar with her. Bucky still ate most of his meals in the hospital room with Steve, but he joined the others for card games and late night chats that ranged from goofy to therapeutic. The best part was when he’d laugh so loud that Steve could overhear him in the room. 

Carol searched for info on his mother as well, but came up empty. When she broke the news, Bucky leaned over the hospital bed and planted his face in the center of Steve’s chest, his tears hot where they soaked through Steve’s shirt.

There were good moments too though between just the two of them—moments where they talked and joked just like old times.

“It was not a duck,” Steve said. “It was a goose. There’s a huge difference, Buck.”

“What’s the difference, Steve?”

“Ducks are cute, and geese are fucking terrifying.”

“You spend your days fighting murderous fascists.”

“And if I had an army of geese, we’d have already won.”

“Gotta admit, it’d be pretty satisfying to know Hydra was defeated by a flock of birds.”

“Well, we do have Sam and Carol.” Steve shrugged, and on they went, circling from birds back around to those summers swimming in the City Reservoir, to strawberry milkshakes and street food.

“Fuck, I miss falafel,” Bucky said.

And that’s how it continued, until Sharon finally cleared Steve for the mission to hand-off the anti-rejection formula.

“The nanites are still working on some deep tissue damage,” Sharon said. “I want the record to show that I’m only clearing you because I know you’re too damn stubborn to stay in bed much longer. If things get hairy and it looks like we could handle it without you, try to stay out of it.”

Curled up in the chair, Bucky scoffed. Sharon glanced his way and then back at Steve.

“Oh, so you’ve always been like this? Good to know,” Sharon said, and Steve did his best to look innocent, smiling at her.

“Pal, no one’s stupid enough to fall for that face,” Bucky said, and Sharon raised an eyebrow at Steve. 

“Carol’s waiting for us,” Sharon said. “Up and at ‘em.”

Bucky offered Steve the metal arm, the plates shifting over the glowing green. Steve took it and let him help him up even if he didn’t need it. It felt good to touch him, even if this part was new. It was a tangible reminder that Bucky really was there, alive and present. Getting someone back from the dead was a rare thing, and Steve wouldn’t take him for granted.

“There he is,” Carol said. “About time you stopped faking it, Captain.”

“Captain.” Steve nodded at her. “You’re lead on this one. What are we doing?”

“We use a few different channels of communication to keep things unpredictable. I finally made contact two days ago. We’re meeting in-” Carol turned her wrist and the gold band around it projected numbers into the air, “-fifty-seven minutes.”

“Gear up?” Steve asked.

Carol shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

“You’ve had a chance to meet everybody already?” Steve asked, turning to Bucky who nodded.

“Everyone but Pierce,” Fury said, and Steve looked around.

“Where’s he?” Steve asked.

“Was gone when we got back from that mission. Left a note saying an old contact of ours reached out for his help and that he’d gone to meet them.” Fury shrugged. “He’s checked in once or twice since to let us know he’s alright.”

Steve nodded. “Some other time then. He doesn’t come on the missions anyway. We can’t afford to lose him.”

“Who is he?” Bucky asked.

“City mayor before Hydra took over. We plan to put him back in the seat after we take them out, at least as an interim head until there can be elections again,” Carol said.

“Let me show you the weapons room, Buck.” Steve jerked his head and crossed the room to what was a large closet once upon a time, back before the building fell into disuse like so much of the City had in the past near-decade.

“Looks like someone put yours in here.” Steve showed Bucky the shelf and the tiny hand-scrawled label with Bucky’s name on it sitting below a couple of guns and a slew of knives. “If you want them.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather use something else.”

“Understood. Anything that isn’t claimed and labeled is fair game. There shouldn’t be any need for weapons at all on this mission, but take as much as you need to feel comfortable. Non-lethal options there, guns there, knives there.” Steve pointed at each in turn and then started gathering his own weapons.

Bucky only took one gun, but he did grab a shock gun and a few different knives, tucking them into various places on his person.

“Everyone good?” Carol asked, standing by the door in her trench. Nat stood beside her, fastening the belt on her own coat, slipping the leather strap through a tiny red hourglass.

“Good,” Sam said.

“Yep.” Fury.

“We’re ready.” Sharon nodded.

“I loaded the formula onto two more palmers,” Carol said, holding up a stack of three small tablets. “Fury and I will take one. Sharon and Nat get the other. And you, Sam, and Bucky get this one. They’re programmed to take you to the rendezvous. As a precaution they’re also programmed to automatically fry all data if you deviate from the plan or stop for longer than sixty seconds. I have no reason to believe we’ll hit any issues, but I’m not taking any chances. This is too important.”

“Agreed,” Steve said, reaching out for a tablet and passing it to Sam.

“You don’t wanna take it?” Sam asked.

“Anything goes wrong, I’m not at full capacity,” Steve said. “You’ve got a better shot at making a break for it and completing the mission. Bucky and I can clear you a path if it comes to that.”

Next to Steve, Bucky nodded once. Sam wrapped his fingers around the edges of the device.

“Staggered exit,” Carol said, “We’ll go first. Then Sharon and Nat. And then you.”

Two minutes later, Steve, Bucky, and Sam stepped out of HQ into the brisk autumn air. Their route took them wide and then along the edges of Illumination Park. Inside, a few Timeless sat below the old trees, their unlit branches starting to rust.

“Not a damn thing is sacred to those bastards, huh?” Bucky said softly. “Not a damn thing.”

“Riley and I used to come here a lot,” Sam said. “Had our first kiss under that big tree on the southwest side.”

“Steve and I had ours right there.” Bucky nodded to a little copse. “Was the last one too, I guess.”

“I didn’t realize you two were…” Sam glanced between them.

Steve didn’t know what to say to that. For one thing, could you call someone your someone if you only officially had something for three whole days? Besides, it had been nine years. Steve hadn’t been alone that entire stretch of time. He’d fallen briefly for another resistance fighter named Thor before they went their separate ways. He’d had a little thing with Sharon, short-lived and mostly casual. There’d also been one night with a total stranger he met outside of a slummy bar. He hadn’t even known their name.

Of course, during those nine years, Bucky had also gone through hell. He wasn’t the same boy Steve had known at sixteen.

And yet it was easy to fall back into step with him, as though they’d never been forced to walk in opposite directions at all. It was easy to imagine it, just as easy as it had been to imagine it back then when Steve tore page after page out of his sketchbooks just trying to get the curve of Bucky’s jaw right.

“Did you ever get to use those pastels?” Bucky asked.

“Once.” Steve fished the drawing out of his pocket, carefully unfolding it. It was a little worn at the creases, the pastels smudged from being pressed together, but it was still unmistakably Bucky at seventeen, a subtle little peek of clockwork visible where his button-up gaped open under his throat.

Bucky stared at it, following Sam automatically when he took the next left, the drawing still open in his hand.

“I saved for a couple weeks to get you those and that book you always drooled over,” Bucky said. “Wish I coulda told you this nine years ago, but looks like it was worth it.”

“Keep it,” Steve said. “Can’t tell you how many times back then I imagined giving it to you. Besides, I can do another one now.”

“A little rougher around the edges these days.” Bucky carefully re-folded the drawing and undid a couple of straps so he could slide it into his coat.

“So am I,” Steve said.

“Hydra patrol incoming,” Sam said, and Steve kept his eyes on Bucky, looking out of his periphery. Two men in black uniforms approached on foot, likely on their way to harass a few Timeless just because they could.

“No one act out of the ordinary,” Steve said, nodding subtly at Bucky. He jerked his head just enough for Steve to see it. “Give me a second to think of something.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Sam said.

“Yeah? Let’s give it a shot. I trust you.”

“Follow my lead.” Sam started gesturing wildly. The patrol moved closer, very likely within earshot. Sam started talking. “So this Timeless is just standing there in the middle of the lobby, sobbing like I’m supposed to give a shit. You chose to get the damn organ, right? I didn’t make that decision for you.” Sam nodded at the patrolmen and kept on going. Steve nodded as well.

“They oughta just round up anybody who can’t keep up with the-” Steve glanced back. “Clear. Kinda feel like I should kick my own ass, but we’re good.”

“ETA two minutes,” Sam said.

They made it without further incident, running into Sharon and Nat right outside, the four of them going in together. Inside the door, another door made of steel with no handles. Nat raised her hand and knocked. 

“Names?”

Nat looked back at the group and then shrugged.

“Natasha Romanoff, Sharon Carter, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and James Barnes,” Nat said.

A thin holoscan shot out from seemingly nowhere and scanned the room.

“We’d feel more comfortable if you left your weapons.” A drawer released from the wall, adjustable dividers shifting around in it to create five spaces. Nat squinted at it and looked back at Steve.

“Carol knows and trusts them,” Steve said, already pulling out weapons and placing them in the drawer. “We’ll do as they ask.”

Another holoscan, and the metal door buzzed and released. The five of them stepped in and walked up the stairs. At the top stood a black woman with a large afro. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Next to her stood another black woman with tiny braided buns—barely over eighteen if Steve had to guess. On the other side of the room, a middle-aged white man in a lab coat eye-dropped something into a beaker. It turned a pale green not dissimilar from Bucky’s arm.

“I’m Monica. This is Shuri, and that’s Dr. Banner.”

“Steve.” He reached out and shook her hand and Shuri’s. “That’s Natasha, Sharon, Sam, and Bucky. Carol and Fury aren’t here yet?”

“They took the longest route,” Monica said. “We’ve been monitoring it over here.” She showed Steve a large tablet screen, two white dots sitting right on top of a red dot that likely stood in for the building they currently occupied. A block away, another white dot inched closer.

Not long after, Shuri buzzed Carol and Fury into the room.

Carol and Monica stared at each other for a beat and then embraced each other fiercely, Carol hugging her so tight that she lifted her up off the floor.

“Mom,” Monica said softly. 

“Hey Lieutenant Trouble,” Carol said, leaning back and putting her hands on either side of Monica’s face. “You look good. How’s Maria?”

“She misses you.” 

“I miss both of you so much. Will you give her these for me? There’s a few in there for you too,” Carol said, pulling out a handful of letters and pressing them into Monica’s hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. You know she’d be right there with you if she didn’t have Nanny’s heart to worry about.”

“I just wanted you to both be safe, and I knew that if I kept coming home-”

“We know, Mom. I promise we know.” Monica hugged Carol again before pulling back. “Let’s see that formula?”

Carol pushed her mohawk back with her fingertips and handed Monica the tablet in her hand.

“Interesting,” Shuri said when Monica pulled up the information on the bigger monitors, projecting the formula and its models into the air in the middle of the lab. All three of them—Monica, Shuri, and Banner—circled around it, talking to each other in low voices.

“Can you do it?” Fury asked.

“Can we do it?” Shuri asked, sounding vaguely amused by the question.

“We can improve it.” Monica said.

“What if we added in a-” Shuri started.

“Mhm.” Monica nodded. “And took out the-”

“Yes!” Shuri said.

“Plus…” Banner pointed at something and both girls nodded emphatically.

“How long are we looking at?” Steve asked.

“We’ll need someone to test it on before we send it out into the world,” Shuri said, “but we can have enough to shake things up a bit in a few weeks.”

“I’ll do it,” Bucky said quickly. “God knows I got enough to test it on. Maybe something unimportant. Only need one kidney, right?”

All three scientists looked at each other and shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” Bucky asked. “Is the kidney thing a myth or something?”

“Thing is that coded anti-rejection medicine is ridiculous. It never should have been this way. All anyone should need is one drug that works for their whole body, not several hits in each organ,” Shuri said.

“Which is how the anti-rejection drugs start when they’re produced. The same drug goes into all organs, but it gets changed on the inside in an interaction between nanites in the drugs and the organ itself. In the end, it only works with markers in that specific organ,” Monica said. “It’s needlessly complicated and, I mean, it’s obvious why they did it, but in theory, we can change that so that it’s one shot, all organs.”

“How soon before you’re ready to test one?” Bucky asked. The three scientists looked at each other again.

“Few hours?” Shuri asked. Bruce nodded.

“Give or take.” Monica shrugged.

“Can you drain what I’ve got left? So we can see if it works the way you want it to?”

“Bucky, can we-” Steve started, but Bucky looked at him sharply.

“This isn’t your call, Steve,” he said sharply, and Steve bit his tongue.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Bruce said.

“Steve and I will stick around then. Until it’s ready.”

“I think I’ll stick around too,” Carol said.

“Just spitballing here, but given how long we’ve all worked for this moment, how about we all just stick around?” Sharon smiled.

“We keep a garden upstairs if anyone wants to see it,” Banner said, and Bucky looked at Steve, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.

Upstairs they went.

The garden was something—taking up the entire floor wall-to-wall. There had to be at least fifty rows of different flowers. Steve lost the hues on a few of the roses, their petals nearly blending into the green of their stems, but everything else was bright and beautiful. A few different species of butterflies flitted from plant to plant. Here and there among the flowers sat light trees just like the ones rusting away in Illumination Park.

“Think they work?” Bucky asked, nodding at the trees. Under each of them was a small bench.

“Wish there was a way to dim the room,” Steve said.

“Hello visitor, did you say you wished to dim the room?” The voice spoke out of nowhere, its tone cool with a slight artificial lilt that didn’t match the speech patterns of anyone Steve had ever met. 

“Uh, yes please,” Bucky said, shrugging at Steve. At that, shades slowly lowered on all the windows. The lights in the ceiling fell as well, until the soft green glow of Bucky’s arm was the only light left in the room.

“Could you maybe turn on the light trees?” Steve asked. “Please.”

“Certainly,” the voice answered.

And just like that, the trees lit up. Bucky chose a path to one on the far side of the room, walking between rows of lilies and irises. He sat on a bench, leaving plenty of room for Steve to join him, which he did. And in that moment, it was just like old times, the two of them leaning back as far as they could on the benches so they could stare at the branches above, lost in starlight.

“You don’t have to do this, Buck. I know you want to help, but you don’t owe anyone anything.”

“You’re an idiot, Stevie,” Bucky said. “And I do have to. You’d do the same if you had a single one of these damn things ticking away inside of you, and you know it.”

Steve sighed.

“I’m not doing it because of what they made me do,” Bucky continued.” I’m doing it because living in this place used to be so damned beautiful. I was excited about this fucking thing.” Bucky tapped on his chest. “I remember being excited, because I thought it was so neat that I needed a new heart and they were able to just make one and put it in me. Your spine. That single little dropper of microscopic robots they squeezed into your ear. We used to think everything was so cool, and they took it and twisted it into something else altogether. They made it so people couldn’t afford it or used it to control folks or both. And now everything is crumbling and there are no teenage boys kissing under the light trees at the park, Steve. No one realizing they’re in love with their best friend while they dream of holding them under the stars. Everything is misery and fear and death, and if I can do anything about that, well, this scrappy little punk I used to know would have wanted me to.”

Steve swallowed thickly, the lights on the branches blurring.

“That scrappy little punk would be damn proud of you, Buck.”

“I’d be damn proud of him too.”

Steve turned his head and found the lights reflected in Bucky’s eyes, gold and pale green light cast onto the skin of his cheek from opposite directions. And Steve couldn’t help himself, reaching over and touching the space where the two colors melded together. Bucky didn’t pull away.

Steve thought about it, about leaning over and pressing their lips together, the memory of another time when he had done that brought to the forefront by the soft glow of the trees. But Bucky had only been back a week, and even if being near him felt as natural as his own heartbeat, even if every smile made Steve feel sixteen again; that very small voice of reason Steve usually kept locked away told him that he needed to wait.

So instead he slowly pulled his hand away and settled back against the bench. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Bucky reach up and touch that same spot on his cheek before he settled back as well. They lost themselves again, time melting into an illusion that didn’t pertain to them anymore.

“Mr. Barnes.” Shuri’s voice finally cut through the room, pumped through the same speakers as the artificial voice. Both Steve and Bucky jumped.

“Uh, yeah?”

“Dr. Banner is ready to start removing the old drugs to prep you for testing.”

“Right.” Bucky exhaled and stood up, glancing at Steve’s eyes before pushing his wavy brown hair back with his fingers. “Uh, I guess you can turn the lights back on in here.”

“Of course,” the voice answered. By the time they crossed the garden to reach the stairs, the room was bright and sunny once again.

* * *

“How do you feel?” Monica asked, sitting on a stool next to Bucky. They had him on a small bed, something that wouldn’t be out of place in a guest room. Bucky had told them he didn’t do so well with medical things, and they’d done everything they could to make him comfortable. Banner had even gone so far as to drag out a pale yellow quilt covered in little smiling beakers and test tubes. He’d draped it over Bucky’s legs and given them a little pat before starting his work. 

“So far the same,” Bucky said. “I’m not dead, so I guess that’s ideal.”

Sam and Nat snorted.

“Well, now we know it won’t poison anyone.” Shuri flexed her hand, and the thin band of purple around her wrist projected a screen onto her forearm. She used four fingers to type out notes on Bucky’s condition.

“How long until we know if it works?” Steve asked, realizing then that if he had to go through losing Bucky again, especially this soon, he might not survive it.

“There’s no exact number for it because all bodies are different.” Monica used a handheld tablet to type her own notes. “I was under the impression that you have team members who are medically trained.”

“We have two,” Steve said.

“Then we’ll need one of them to take some blood samples. We’ll get one before you leave, but one mid-week and a week from now should do it. We’ll measure and compare the antibodies and see if his body is starting to attack the foreign objects. If it’s not, then we’ve got a pretty good idea of the drug’s efficacy.”

Steve nodded.

“What if I just got a cold or something?” Bucky asked.

Shuri looked up at him with a small smile. “If we found antibodies, we would check for signs of an infection first.”

“And if the drug doesn’t work?” Steve asked.

“Then they’d make another one, and we’d try again,” Bucky said.

“Bucky.”

“Steve.”

“ _If_ it doesn’t work, and we’re highly confident that it will, we’d remove it and let you supply him with standard anti-rejection drugs,” Monica said. “We would work on another version though, and if Mr. Barnes wanted to test it as well, we’d consider that possibility once he’d recovered from the first trial.”

“Okay.” Steve nodded.

“Then let’s get our initial sample, and we’ll see you in a week,” Banner said.

* * *

They split off into groups again for the trek back to HQ, everything the same except for the fact that Sam had been in a rousing conversation with Carol about wingpack models, so after she gave Monica a lengthy hug goodbye, Sam chose to accompany her and Fury so they could continue it. 

That left Steve and Bucky alone, the two of them weaving their own path back. Steve avoided the park this time, choosing instead to walk wide. This took them past the old City Art Museum. He didn’t spare a glance for the chains on the front door or the way the white marble edifice had grown filthier and filthier over the years in the places the rain didn’t reach.

Instead, he focused on Bucky, on the sound of his breathing and the way his gait had changed since they were kids. The old Bucky had walked with a confident lumber. This Bucky walked catlike, his steps almost whisper quiet.

“What?” Bucky asked.

“Hm?”

“Take a picture, Steve. It’ll last longer. Or is there something on my face?”

“Just your ugly mug, Buck.”

“You’re one to talk, pal.” Bucky rolled his eyes and kept walking, the two of them rounding the corner and passing by a few struggling restaurants and a thriving loan store.

“Steve…”

“Yeah?”

It took Bucky several moments to actually speak again, his brow furrowing.

“Back in the garden at the lab, you-” Bucky touched his cheek again. “I wanted…”

“Yeah?”

“Thing is, I know it’s been almost ten years and that we ain’t kids anymore, but as much as it feels like it’s been even longer than it has, it doesn’t at the same time, not for me anyhow. I guess I didn’t really get to be myself during any of that, so I didn’t exactly have time to get over you, and obviously I’m not that same seventeen-year-old who let you lay one on him in the park, but at the same time, some part of me still is.”

“I know what you mean,” Steve said before shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that. I have no idea what you’ve been-”

“Don’t.” Bucky looked down at the sidewalk. “I know you didn’t mean it like that. You don’t gotta walk on eggshells because of what they did to me.”

“Okay.” Steve stopped walking, and Bucky stopped too before turning to look at him.

“I won’t pretend I’ve been alone the past nine years,” Steve said. “Like you said, we were kids. Who knows if it would’ve lasted? Maybe we would’ve been together a few weeks or a couple of years. Or maybe we would’ve been those types who get together young and grow old together. We’ll never know because Hydra took that from both of us. That sweet, innocent little thing we had is gone forever, and we can’t get it back or know what it might have become.”

Bucky frowned, his entire forehead creasing.

“But what they can’t take is the fact that I never stopped thinking about you. Holding onto you and Ma helped me do what I needed to do all these years. And when I saw you that day, it was like being punched in the gut. And since then, I- I don’t know if it’s that I never really got over you completely. Or maybe falling for you is as easy for me as breathing—okay that’s probably a bad example considering the asthma—but you know what I mean. I guess what I’m trying to say is-”

“Kiss me.”

“Bucky.”

“Steve.”

“I wasn’t done. I still don’t know if it’s a good idea. You just got yourself back and I’m the only person you really know, so it-”

Bucky rolled his eyes and reached forward, fisting the front of Steve’s duster and backing him toward the nearest wall.

“Tell me you don’t wanna, that it didn’t all come pouring back.”

“Bucky.”

“If you don’t wanna, that’s another thing altogether, but it doesn’t have to be complicated, Stevie. I know what I want and I’m asking.”

“We can’t,” Steve said.

“Like hell we can’t. What did I just say?”

“No, Bucky, we really can’t.” Steve pushed him away as gently as he could. “Two fellas. Two gals. Hydra outlawed it, and there’s enough people on this street that it could attract unnecessary attention. We’re too close to jeopardize things.”

Bucky paused, looking down and blinking several times while that sank in.

“Those bastards,” he said softly, his voice giving way to a low growl. “Those absolute fucking bastards. Fuck, I’ll kill every last one of ‘em.”

Fondness surged in Steve’s chest.

“You’re goddamned right, you will.”

* * *

They made it back to HQ without a hiccup. 

“Everyone in?” Steve asked over the comms once he and Bucky slipped inside the main door. A waterfall of voices told him that everyone else had made it back okay. “Go on up,” he told Bucky, jerking his head toward the stairwell. “I’m gonna lock up, and then you and I can find somewhere quiet to continue our conversation from earlier.”

Bucky smiled and turned on the ball of one foot before jogging upstairs. On the landing, Steve went through the process of fully securing the building, first doing all the locks that had been there before they found it and took over. Next, he shuffled three different metal rods into place. Finally, he added a DIY alarm made of metal cans and pieces, strapping it across the room so that if anyone did burst through the door, they’d have a pretty decent chance of hearing them coming.

He figured they’d be hitting pause on missions until the scientists determined whether or not their drugs worked. Which meant that he had a whole week of Bucky to himself to start figuring out where they stood and how to move forward at a pace that felt right for who they were now.

With that thought, he jogged up the steps, his worn boots scuffing on the concrete.

“Okay Buck I-”

At the top of the stairs, Steve walked right into a standoff, just like the ones he used to see in the Outlands over water or fuel. Every single one of his crew had a gun drawn and pointed at Bucky, who had his own gun drawn and pointed at Pierce.

“Bucky, put the gun down,” Steve said softly, inching closer to him.

“He’s one of them,” Bucky said.

“He’s confused.” Pierce kept his hands up on either side of his head, a handheld tablet gripped loosely in one of them. “I’m sure they did a lot to his mind while they had him.”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” Bucky spit on the floor by Pierce’s feet. “He’s the one who put the order out on you. He told me where I’d find you. I can’t believe I didn’t-”

Steve looked between Bucky and Pierce and then caught Nat’s eye. She seemed to make her mind up on something, slowly turning her gun away from Bucky and onto Pierce. Fury followed suit, then Carol, Sam, and Sharon.

“Are you people really going to believe the addled ramblings of someone who just got their mind back from Hydra?”

“My mind was just fine after Hydra, Mr. Mayor,” Nat said, shifting catlike from one foot to the other.

“You were the only City Council member I didn’t find dead that day, Alexander. Here I thought you were just a lucky son of a bitch.” Fury’s jaw clenched.

“Can I shoot him?” Bucky asked.

“If you don’t, I sure as hell will,” Fury said.

Steve finally drew his gun.

“On your knees,” Steve said, pointing the barrel right at Pierce’s head.

“That’s not going to happen,” Pierce said, turning his handheld around to show them all a big red button in the center of a screen. Above it, white letters spelled out “Insight – Asset Test.”

“Is this where you try to convince us that you rigged the building with explosives?” Fury asked.

“This is where I tell him,” Pierce said, looking directly at Steve, “that if he doesn’t want his new pet to die, you’ll all put the guns away.”

“I could shoot you before you managed to hit that thing. You know that. You helped train me.” Bucky didn’t lower his gun even a millimeter.

“I can still press a button while I’m bleeding out, Asset.”

“So what happens if you do?” Carol challenged.

“He’s more Zola Organs than human these days. Every single one of them would shut down instantly.”

“You’re bluffing,” Sam said.

“You just referred to him as an asset. Hydra’s had him for years and went through a lot to train him and make him into what you needed. Why would you just kill him?” Sharon asked. “I’m with Sam. You’re bluffing.”

“Captain, do you wanna find out if they’re right?” Pierce asked, waving the handheld at Steve.

Steve darted his eyes back and forth between Pierce and Bucky. Bucky glanced at him and shook his head the slightest bit, and all Steve could do was try to look sorry.

“Put down the tablet, and we’ll put down the guns.”

“No, I don’t think that works for me either,” Pierce said. “You put down the guns and I walk out. Anyone of you tries to stop me, click.”

Steve inhaled through his nose, both nostrils flaring. Pierce looked at Bucky and then at him before smiling just so. If Bucky didn’t take Pierce out first, Steve was going to strangle him to death.

“Fine,” Steve said through his teeth. “Everyone, guns down.”

Slowly, everyone placed their guns on the ground. Fury glared at Pierce as he stood back up to his full height.

“Captain, how about you escort me out,” Pierce said, and Steve clenched his jaw and fell into step behind him. Before they disappeared down the stairwell, Steve glanced back at Nat. One corner of her mouth twitched up.

Down the stairs they went until they hit the front door. Steve stepped forward to open it, taking down the makeshift alarm, then the three bars, then the locks. He turned the handle and-

Natasha came out of seemingly nowhere, her foot colliding with Pierce’s handheld tablet. It went flying to the floor. Pierce threw one frantic glance behind him to see the rest of the crew barreling down the stairs with their guns drawn. Steve hit the deck, and the second he did, shots rang out, colliding with the wall and the door. Pierce didn’t stop though, sprinting as fast as he could out into the alley, right into a waiting vehicle.

Steve got to his feet in record time, reaching for the tablet and carefully pulling open the back cover to rip out the battery.

“Emergency protocols now!” Steve yelled. “Pack it up. I want us out of here in three minutes.”

“Where to, Steve?” Sharon asked. “Pierce knows all our HQs.”

“I’ll think of something,” Steve said. “Just pack it up.”

“I know a place,” Bucky said, following the quick shuffle up the stairs. “It’s Hydra’s, but the crew’s small. We could take it, and it’s gotta be one of the last places they’d look for us.”

“How far?” Steve asked.

“Fifteen blocks due south. It’s near the water.”

Steve nodded. “Okay, there’s our location. How are we doing?”

Sam and Sharon emerged from the hospital room panting, duffels hanging from their shoulders.

“Med’s clear,” Sharon said.

“Weapons clear.” Nat shrugged on a bag and tossed another at Fury who caught it and slung it over his arm.

“Tech clear.” Carol slipped on a backpack over her trench coat, pulling the straps taut.

“Buck, help me.” Steve threw a couple of duffels at Bucky and started ransacking the kitchen area, tossing over food packages and a few bottles of water. He tucked one of their homemade water filters into his pocket for safekeeping, stowing the other in a side pocket of one of the bags.

“If there’s anything else you’d like to grab, I suggest you do it now,” Steve said, and Carol sprinted to a wall near her work area and ripped down a photo of her, a woman, and a little girl, who had to be Monica.

“Let’s go. Bucky, can you give us cross streets so we can spread out?”

Bucky blinked several times.

“Uh…”

“Here,” Carol said, holding out a handheld, a map pulled up on the screen. Bucky traced a few streets with his fingers.

“There. Riverside and South 57th.”

“Same groups we were just in,” Steve said. “Go, go, go.”

Steve and Bucky were last to leave the door. Hoping for the best, Steve secured it, typing in the code for the lock. Nothing left behind was vital, but maybe they’d be able to come back someday if Pierce didn’t have it raided within the next few minutes.

From there, he followed Bucky, quickly weaving through side streets and alleys, avoiding anything that even smelled like a Hydra officer. They were the first to make it to the rendezvous, both of them panting and Steve grateful that he’d just had a fresh nanite treatment for his asthma. He sucked in breath after breath, feeling relieved when Sharon, Sam, and Nat made it a few minutes later.

Fury and Carol were the last to arrive, Carol’s knuckles bleeding. Fury had a large bleeding gash over one of his eyes, his face screwed up on that side where he held it shut.

“Ran into Hydra Patrol.” Carol said.

“The fortunate thing is that you can’t put out an APB if you’re dead.” Fury laughed weakly, and they followed Bucky down an alley. He raised his metal fist, thought for a second, and rapped out a pattern. The door opened a moment later, a surprised-looking man in a bowtie standing right inside. Bucky pulled his arm back and took a swing, bone cracking where he made contact. The man hit the ground, and Steve had a feeling he wouldn’t get up again.

“How many more?” Steve asked, drawing his gun.

“Three. Four tops,” Bucky said. “They’re not fighters.”

“What are they?” Sharon asked.

“They do the resets,” Nat answered, looking uncomfortable. “Anytime the tech acted up or I started to resist it, they… made adjustments.”

Bucky frowned at her, reaching over and touching her shoulder.

“Adjustments usually involved an awful lot of electrocuting the shit out of me,” Bucky said.

“Med team with Fury. Everyone else, let’s clear the building. Kill anyone who isn’t ours.”

“Not a problem,” Nat said.

They were back before Sam finished taping a bandage over Fury’s eye.

“You’ve got a little blood,” Bucky said, looking at Steve. He reached over and wiped it from Steve’s brow.

* * *

“Fuck,” Carol said, sometime later after they’d removed the bodies and settled in. The entire team had sprawled around the biggest room they could find as the adrenaline crash hit. It seemed to be an old vault in whatever bank had been in the building before Hydra took over. 

“Fuck?” Steve asked, lazily turning his head. Carol sat in a large leather desk chair pulled from another room, a larger tablet in her hands.

“Fuck.” She nodded.

“What is it, Captain?” Steve asked.

“He wasn’t bluffing,” Carol said, and Steve sat all the way up.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I did some digging just in case, and found Program Insight. It was hidden behind about 27 different doors and it took me longer than usual to decrypt it—Zola finally changed his codes by the way, not that I don’t already have the new ones. But that’s beside the point.”

“What is Insight exactly?” Sam asked. “He said it would shut down all his organs.”

“Apparently every single Zola Organ has a remote killswitch,” Carol said. “They could kill over half the City if they wanted.”

“We have to shut that down yesterday.” Steve stood up, suddenly less tired than he had been a few seconds ago.

“It gets worse.” Carol frowned at her screen.

“How the hell does it get worse than remote killswitches?” Sharon asked.

“They plan to use them. There’s something here about an algorithm that can assess potential threats to Hydra rule. There’s a whole list. Pierce or no Pierce, Bucky’s right here.” She scrolled down and down. “Wilson too.”

“Awesome.” Sam nodded.

“No,” Carol said softly.

“What is it?” Nat asked.

“My wife is on here,” Carol said, her jaw clenching. “I stayed away from her this whole fucking time to keep her safe, and here she is on a Hydra kill list.”

“She’s still safe, Carol,” Fury said. “We’ll keep it that way.”

“Damn right we will.” Bucky balled his metal hand up into a fist, the black plates of the arm shifting over the green. “Hard to kill people when you’re dead.”

“Anybody got anything to drink?” Sam asked. “Because I’ll drink to that.”

Carol gathered herself with a deep breath.

“We’ve got three days before they launch this thing,” she said.

“Then we’ve got some plans to make.” Steve rifled through the duffels for a large folded map of the City, unfurling it over a big metal desk. “Any idea where they’re launching it from?”

“TRSKLN Command is all it says.” Carol turned the tablet around to show him, and Steve looked over at Bucky.

“City Headquarters,” Bucky said. “The big building downtown.”

“The old Stark Corp. tower, right?” Carol asked, standing next to them by the map. “I’ll try to pull blueprints.”

“If we’re lucky, they’ll forget to lock the back door,” Bucky said.

“If we’re lucky.” Steve nodded.

* * *

They spent all night and day planning, Carol and Bucky pooling their knowledge with a little input from Nat. Their first order of business would be to break into the facility. 

“We’ll need the whole team,” Bucky said. “TRSKLN is crawling with Hydra. There’s a Patrol Station there, Hydra Strike too, and then tons of others—support staff, decision-makers… Zola and Schmidt.”

“Probably Pierce too then,” Sharon said.

Bucky nodded. “Strong possibility.”

“Then we all go,” Steve said. “You’ve been there a lot? Know the place well?”

“Yeah, I can navigate it,” Bucky said.

“Then you’ll take lead on the mission. Get us where we need to go to stop this thing from happening.”

“And Zola, Schmidt, and Pierce?” Bucky asked.

“We’ve wanted to hit those first two assholes before. Tried once during the so-called Hydra Independence Celebration,” Fury said. “They haven’t really been out in public since.”

“I say we focus on Insight first. We get it shut down completely, and then we can go after the heads,” Carol said.

“I agree with the Captain,” Sam said. “Though I guess I’m a little biased when it comes to not dying via my lungs shutting down.”

“Fair enough.” Bucky shrugged.

“Anyone have anything else they’d like to add?” Steve asked, glancing around at the team. No one moved to speak. “Okay, so Insight is our focus, but we go after the big three once we’re done. That said, if you have a shot at any of them before that and can take it without compromising the mission…”

“When do we move out, Barnes?” Carol asked.

Bucky chewed that over, the fingers of his metal hand twitching against his left thigh.

“Five,” he said. “There’s a guard change at six, and they’re usually the newer guys—less training, more likely to miss a shot.”

“Five it is. Everyone rest up. Eat and drink something even if you have to force it down.” Steve stood up from what probably served as some kind of conference table when Hydra had the building. He tugged the front of his coat down where it had ridden up and glanced over at Bucky, who looked up from where he’d been talking low to Carol.

“Ten minute break?” Steve asked.

“Go,” she said. “We’ve done all we can do from here anyway. We’re just repeating ourselves at this point. Besides, it’s better for the mission if everyone’s had a little rest.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Bucky said, and he joined Steve, following him through the building until they reached what seemed to be a break room, a wall of windows looking out over the bay. Steve sat down at a table and patted the chair to his left. Bucky lowered himself onto it.

“What’s the likelihood we make it through this without losing anyone?” Steve asked softly. Bucky hadn’t exactly side-stepped the danger of it, but he hadn’t gone into detail either.

“I’m really trying not to let that happen.”

“But?”

“If I can keep us in places where they can’t come at us without bottlenecking, we stand a good shot.”

“But?”

“If I can’t do that, then there’s a decent chance we lose a lot more than one.”

“We’ll just try to stay optimistic then.” Steve smiled softly.

Bucky fell quiet for a moment, looking down at the top of the table. He fiddled with a tiny gouge in the linoleum surface. When he looked back up at Steve, he did it with quiet intensity.

“Some things are worth dying for.”

“Yeah, they are,” Steve said, and he reached over and laid his hand on top of Bucky’s, feeling the warmth of his skin under his palm. Slowly, Bucky turned it over, twining his fingers through Steve’s. His thumb brushed across one of Steve’s knuckles. They didn’t break eye contact.

They leaned in, everything around them slowing until it felt like even the clocks that adorned Bucky’s chest and torso had to have paused. Steve placed his free hand over the center of Bucky’s chest, feeling that little piece of tech beneath his fingers. In his own chest, his heart pounded against his ribcage.

He and Bucky touched foreheads first, nuzzling into each other while they shared space and air. With Bucky’s nose brushing against Steve’s, a kiss felt like the next natural step, and their mouths met like they had always known the way.

In his arms, Bucky shuddered. His lips parted, and Steve slipped his tongue inside, licking delicately along Bucky’s. When they drew back, they punctuated the kiss with a couple of gentle pecks. From there, Steve took that opportunity to kiss Bucky’s cheek, his forehead, the sensitive spot behind one ear. Bucky tilted his head back, giving Steve access to his neck. So Steve covered it in soft kisses too, little tender slides of his lips that led to Bucky’s jawline, where he traveled to Bucky’s ear again, then back to that little divot in the center of his chin. There was another kiss after that, then another, and another still, both of their fingers tangled in each others’ hair.

When they finally stopped kissing, breathless and panting, they landed forehead-to-forehead once more, arms wrapped around one another. Steve didn’t want to let go, not in that moment, not ever.

“I was a little worried that might not happen before…” Bucky trailed off. “If we get through this, I wanna do that every day. I wanna do more than that too. We never- I’ve never.”

“I’ve got you,” Steve said, gently stroking Bucky’s flesh arm.

Bucky nuzzled against Steve’s forehead again, his breathing a little heavier.

“It’s 4:30,” Bucky said quietly, tilting the wrist of his metal arm so that it displayed the time in white-green numbers on a panel near his wrist.

“What do you wanna do?” Steve asked, watching the numbers blink away.

“Can we just stay like this until it’s time?”

Steve tipped his head just enough to kiss the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

“Just like this,” Steve said, time moving both gorgeously slow and painfully fast all at once.

* * *

At dusk, Bucky led them all through the shadows of alleys and small side-streets. They zig-zagged away from their new HQ near the bay until they came to a single metal door tucked away on the back side of an old brick building. 

“Everyone look as menacing as possible. I’m hoping Hydra’s been too proud to admit they lost me and that this guy doesn’t know.” Bucky threw a glance back at everyone and then pressed his metal thumb onto the grimy button of a doorbell. A man threw it open a few moments later, his clothes disheveled, a bottle of something sloshing in one of his hands.

“You’re back, you scary fuck,” the guy said.

“Access code 27738,” Bucky spat out in a mechanical-sounding voice.

“What the fuck ever. I’ve got two friends over for a good time. You and your scary fuck crew hurry up with it.”

Bucky stepped inside, gun held low, and the rest of them followed him in. They moved room to room, the guy stumbling along behind them.

“I’ll be right back,” he said when they passed a living room, a man and a woman writhing half-naked on a shitty sofa. On the table, several lines of white powder sat in a row. Steve forced himself not to react beyond a sideways glance. Next to him, Sam cleared his throat.

They kept walking until they hit a kitchen, and the man pulled open the pantry door—the inside of it containing more alcohol than food. He kicked a crate of dry goods to the side with an untied boot and reached for a little ring on the floor before tugging it up. The hinges screeched.

“Down you go, scary fuck.”

Bucky descended first, and the team followed him one by one, the dim light of the pantry and the green glow of Bucky’s arm the only light they had. When they were all down, the hinges of the door screeched again, plunging them into near-pitch darkness.

“Jesus, are there any lights down here?” Sam asked. “I can’t see shit besides that arm.”

“Stay put,” Bucky said. Steve watched the green glow move along one of the walls, Bucky clearly using it as his own personal flashlight. A click and a buzz, and the shaft lit up with dull yellow. “This way,” he said, leading them away from the ladder.

“When did Hydra build this?” Sharon asked, running her hand along one of the walls.

“They didn’t,” Fury said. “A lot of the City’s utilities run underground. There’s access tunnels like these all over. Used to chase a lot of criminals through these.”

“Deja vu then, huh?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Fury said.

They followed Bucky deeper, moving past a few different offshoots, some of which were short and led to ladders heading up. Others were long enough that Steve couldn’t tell where they led at all.

“We’re getting close,” Bucky said, after they came to a three-tined fork. Bucky took the leftmost passage and they all followed him down and around a corner, where they came to a stop in front of a large steel door. He stared at it a moment and turned back to face them.

“There’s always three to four guards on this door, with three or four more backups within earshot,” Bucky said. “They’ll come running the second we start shooting, and there isn’t a way for us to slip quietly through this thing, so shooting is pretty much what we’ve got. I’d crack the door and use it to funnel them, but I don’t wanna give them time to alert anyone that we’re here. When they spot us, they’re likely to go for the alarm, which is part of the panel on the left side of the room. Our mission is to eliminate the guards while keeping them away from that panel.”

Carol and Wilson glanced at each other.

“You wanna take this one?” she asked.

“Yep.” Sam hit a switch on the shoulder of his repaired wingpack, and Steve could hear the quiet mechanical whir of it coming to life, the gears and circuits all warming up.

“Everyone set?” Bucky asked. The team answered via the sounds of several people checking their individual firearms. “Okay, here we go. In three, two, one.”

With the metal arm, he grabbed the door and wrenched it open and off its hinges in one violent tug. Without losing his grip, he twisted the whole unit sideways, using it like a giant shield while the team flowed into the room and started shooting. Behind them, Sam leapt up and took flight, spiraling through the air with the wings wrapped tight around him, bullets clanging off the metal. He reached the panel within seconds and started taking shots.

As promised, more guards came running at the sound of gunfire, except it was much more than three or four. Instead, what had to be at least two dozen people came streaming in like soldier ants.

“Fuck, I’m out,” Sharon said, ducking down below the door-turned-shield. She fumbled for bullets in her coat pocket, sliding them into the chamber of her six-shooter as quickly as she could. She came up right around the time that Fury and Carol both had to duck for their own reloads.

“They’re all in body armor,” Steve said into the comms. “We need head or neck shots here.”

Sharon popped off a shot, the bullet tearing right through the jugular of a woman in black fatigues. She toppled onto another guard, giving Steve the opportunity to take him down.

“Fuck,” Bucky hissed, dropping his own body while holding the door aloft. Steve caught the sight of blood pouring from somewhere in his right arm. Bucky could no longer hold his gun steady, the whole thing shaking in his weakened grip. 

“Just stay down and keep holding onto this thing, okay?” Steve gave the door a light tap with the barrel of his gun. “We’ve got it.”

Bucky nodded and stayed low while the gunfire continued.

“Steve!” Sam yelled from across the room, and Steve looked over in time to see him hand-to-hand fighting with five different guards, knives in both of his hands, the wings acting like an extension of him, occasionally reaching out to bat a guard away if they got too close.

“Shit. Carol,” Steve said.

“On it.” She activated her own wings and went shooting out from behind the door, looping over the top of several guards, her wings protecting her. She landed right beside Sam and shot a guard point blank in the face, sending them flying back several feet.

Down the line, Sharon let out a tiny cry of pain, dipping down behind the safety of the door, fingers stemming the bleeding from a wound on her left shoulder. Cringing, she dug in her pockets for a large wad of gauze, ripping the packaging open with her teeth and pressing it tight.

That left Steve, Nat, and Fury on the main line with Sam and Carol protecting the alarm. The gunfire continued.

“Reloading,” Nat said. She whipped a knife out of her coat and tossed it across the room where it embedded in the eye socket of a guard. With a small smirk, she dipped down, ditched her clip, and threw in another.

“My turn.” Steve went next, reloading in under three seconds.

“And me.” Fury dropped.

And so it went, the three of them shooting and reloading until they picked off every last guard except for the four fighting with Carol and Sam too closely for them to risk the shots.

“You can let go,” Steve said, and Bucky dropped the door, the plates of his metal arm re-adjusting and whirring as though they were relieved. Bucky looked exhausted and pale, and Sharon didn’t look much better. “You two stay put and rest as much as you can. The rest of us…” Steve jerked his head toward Sam and Carol, and they all moved to surround the four guards.

“Hey sailor,” Nat said, drawing the attention of one of the guards before catching him across the face with a violent right hook. He fell right into Carol who shoved her knife through his temple.

“And then there were three,” Steve said, raring back and kicking one right into the tip of one of Sam’s wings.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider surrendering,” Fury said to the final two guards, still fighting, both of them working together like one unit. Even five-on-two, the team struggled to make contact with either of them. Finally, after an exhausting round of fighting, Nat got the man into a pin while Carol caged the woman against a large cement column with her wings. Both guards continued to struggle even though it was obviously over for them.

“Wait!” Bucky cried, scrambling across the room and dripping blood the whole way. He reached into his coat and then Steve’s, pulled out a shock rod and shock gun, and pressed one into the woman’s neck while he shot the other at the skin on the other side. She went limp and slid to the floor. Next, he did the same to the man. When he didn’t go down, Nat fished in her coat and added another shock rod into the mix.

“Why exactly didn’t we shoot them?” Sam panted, his hands on his knees.

“Because…” Bucky used the metal arm to pull down the collar of the man’s tac jacket, revealing a black box attached just under where the collar would hide it. “I almost missed it.”

“Hell. None of the rest of them had those, right?” Fury asked, checking beneath the woman’s collar and finding another box.

“I’ll make sure,” Steve said. “Secure those two and see if you can find codes.”

He walked body to body, relieved when he found nothing. Truth be told, even if he had, he was going to lie about it. Better he held that guilt on his own than make anyone else, especially Bucky or Nat, walk around with it.

“They’re clear.”

“I think they’re the Maximoff twins,” Carol said. “Try 76568421 for her and 76568422 for him.”

“Got ‘em,” Nat said. “Question is what do we do with them while we storm a building to stop a plot to murder half the City?”

“Secure them. I’ll stay,” Sharon said.

“No.” Steve shook his head. “You’d be a sitting duck right here if anyone else showed up, and I gotta think they were expecting us and will realize we’re here soon enough with or without the alarm. Why else would they have so many guards waiting in the wings?”

“He’s right,” Bucky said. “How long was I out when you did this to me?”

“Not long,” Nat said.

“We wait and explain, then go from there,” Bucky said.

It didn’t take a full minute for the twins to come to, both of them blinking several times.

“Oh God,” the woman said first. The man said nothing, his eyes wide and wild at the scene in front of him.

“Listen. We’re taking on Hydra right now,” Bucky said. “They’re launching something called Insight tomorrow. If they manage it, thousands will die, and it’ll be even harder to get rid of them or to convince anyone to stand against them. I’ve been where you are, and I know you’re processing a lot right now, but we don’t have a lot of time. You’ve got three options. You can go out that door there, follow the tunnel straight, and make a go of it on your own. You can hide and wait for any of us who survive this to come find you. Me and her-” Bucky paused and pointed at himself and Nat. “We’ve both been through what you’re going through, and if you choose that one, we’ll be there for you as much as we can.”

“And the third option?” the man asked, speaking in a thick accent, something Outland that Steve thought might be Czech or Sokovian.

“You come with us and get your revenge now,” Bucky said. The twins glanced at each other, communicating silently. When they reached their decision, they stood up.

“I’m Bucky,” Bucky said, holding out his metal arm, the other one still dripping, though it seemed to have slowed.

“Pietro.” The blond shook it.

“Wanda,” the woman said. “Can I see that?” She nodded at the knife in Carol’s hand, and Carol flipped it over deftly and handed it to her handle-first. Wanda used it to slice the Hydra patch off her shoulder, ripping it free of the last few threads. Then she did the same for her brother.

“Where are they launching from?” Pietro asked.

“Command Center 2B,” Carol said.

“We know what floor the centers are on, but that’s as far as we could get between what I remember and what blueprints she could pull. If you know something else, that’d help,” Bucky said.

“This way.” Wanda picked up a couple of dead guards’ guns on the way out.

* * *

Even with two injured team members, they tore their way up the stairwell with ease. Whatever Pietro and Wanda felt about Hydra controlling them for as long as they had, they shoved it aside. They fought like a machine, one sensing the other’s needs or where they would be. When their guns ran out, they used knives with unparalleled accuracy until they could pick up new guns. And when all else failed, the two of them just threw guards right over the sides of the railing. 

On the landing of the third floor, the twins stopped, sent two shots at men coming down from above, and threw the door open.

“I thought all the commands were on four,” Carol said.

“All but one.” Wanda jerked her head down the hallway, walking quickly before rounding a corner. Steve saw her stop dead before he rounded it himself. When he did, he found a whole group of men in very serious tactical gear staring them down.

At the forefront stood a man with dark black hair, the sides shaved. With a smirk, he raised an automatic gun in their direction. Steve grabbed Wanda around the same time that Pietro did, the two of them yanking her back the way they came before bullets sprayed right into the spot where she’d been standing.

“Is there another way into that room?” Steve asked, his voice raised over the sound of gunfire. Wanda shook her head, hands pressed over her ears. Steve swore under his breath.

“How many?” Bucky asked, and Steve read his lips more than he actually heard him. Steve held up one finger on one hand and five on the other before scooting close enough for Bucky to hear him.

“Heavily armed. Lots of gear.”

“Hydra Strike,” Bucky said, waving his hand for the group to fall back, all of them running down the narrow hall and past the stairs. They hooked a left this time, taking them away from Strike, but leaving them in a position to circle back around, the hallways making essentially a large figure eight with stairs and elevators in the center.

“Any advice on engaging with these sons of bitches?” Steve asked. The gunfire had died down, the group either waiting for them to come back, reloading, or actively searching for them.

“Any chance they wouldn’t notice if we tried to sneak up on them from behind?” Sam asked.

“They’d notice,” Bucky, Wanda, Pietro, and Nat all said at once.

“They’re assholes, but they’re good at what they do,” Pietro said.

Steve furrowed his brow and looked around the hallway for inspiration. It seemed to hit him and Carol at the same time.

“Do these windows open?” Carol asked.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” someone called from down the hall. “Either way, you’re gonna die. But whether or not you surrender is the difference between fast and slow.”

“If they don’t open, they’re gonna.” Bucky hopped up, trying a latch. It opened a crack, stopped by two bolts on the track. Using his metal fingers, he gripped the bolts and yanked them right out, pushing the window open the rest of the way. Carol and Sam both leapt right out, their wings opening in an instant.

“Captain Danvers to team, do you copy?”

“Copy,” Steve said quietly. “Wilson, comms check?”

“Loud and clear. We’re coming around the building.”

“As soon as you have a visual on them, rain down.”

“Copy.”

“Copy.”

It felt like no time at all before gunfire rang out again, this time accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

“Fuck! Fuck!” someone screamed from down the hall. “Shoot those fuckers down now!”

“Falcon, Captain, do you have a visual on the center hall?” Steve asked.

“Hold on,” Sam said. Steve heard the shots and then their echo over the comms before Sam said, “It’s clear now.”

Steve motioned, and they all headed back, jogging the way they came. Instead of making a straight play for the command center though, they went past the middle hall. This put them in the hallway opposite of the one they needed. If Sam and Carol were able to clear a path, they’d be able to circle around the U-bend at the end to the door.

Steve was just about to peek around the corner when he stopped, backing up and looking at the solid wall that separated them from the room they needed.

“How thick do you think this is?” he asked, looking back at Bucky.

“One way to find out,” Bucky said, and he drew back and punched hard. A large chunk fell off the thick cement brick. “We’d probably have better luck the other way.”

“Worth a shot.” Steve shrugged. “Back to Plan A.”

He skidded up to the corner and moved his head just enough to get a look down the hall. A bullet whizzed right by his left eye.

“How many more?” Steve asked quietly.

“I’m counting six,” Carol said. Another shot.

“Make that five,” Wilson answered.

“Can you clear the- fuck!” Steve ducked to avoid the Hydra Strike soldier coming around the corner. Bucky caught the barrel of the soldier’s automatic and forced it upwards before he could open fire. Bullets sprayed into the ceiling and showered them all with dust and insulation. With a violent pull, Bucky yanked the gun out of the soldier’s hand, flipping it around and firing three shots in quick succession right into his skull.

“Four,” Bucky said, breathing heavily. He bent down and pulled weapons off the body, tossing guns and clips at Wanda and Pietro. He tucked a spare clip for the automatic into a pocket on his coat, rolled the body over, and then smiled before liberating a tiny metal cylinder from the man’s belt.

“Game changer,” Bucky said, standing back up. He passed the automatic off to Natasha and backtracked to the gouge he’d put in the concrete wall. Two more punches, and he managed to crack it enough that pinpricks of light from the command center bled through. Bucky put his eye up to it.

“Looks like all the screens are on that side of the room,” Bucky said, before activating his comm. “That middle hallway still clear?”

“Clear,” Carol confirmed.

“Everyone back there now,” he said, shoving the cylinder into the hole. Steve, of course, didn’t budge. He stood there until Bucky pulled the pin and the two of them hauled ass together, skidding around the corner right when the wall exploded into a cloud of brick and dust.

“Which one of you fucking morons used a grenade?” a Strike soldier yelled. “Jesus.”

“Go go go,” Bucky said, and they all took off, clambering over rubble into the center of Command Center 2B. Inside, the man with the deep black hair stood up from a computer, wiping dust off of his clothes. Behind him, the countdown on the screen shifted from 19:21:39 to 00:01:30… 29… 28…

“You’re too late,” he said. “A minute from now, you and half the people in this City who have ever even thought about getting in Hydra’s way, gone.”

“You know, even when I wasn’t allowed to hate anything, I always did fucking hate working with you, Rumlow.” Bucky scowled.

“Hard same,” Wanda said, and she drew her gun and took the shot before Steve could even register the movement. Rumlow slumped to the floor.

“We’ve got a minute to stop this fucking thing,” Fury said. “And our best tech resource is in the air.”

“On it,” Pietro said, climbing out through the hole and taking off at breakneck speed.

“Where’s he going?” Sharon asked.

“For once, I have no idea,” Wanda said. “This seems like the kind of thing you go at from all angles though.”

“Carol, we’ve got less than a minute now before Insight goes. Get in here,” Steve said.

“Fuck.” They’d already lost five seconds by the time she shot into the room and landed, her wings folding up behind her while she rushed to the computer and started tapping away frantically. Everything she tried was met with a denial or an error. She swore repeatedly, her mohawk slicked back with sweat.

“10… 9…”

Bucky moved closer and laced his fingers together with Steve’s. Sam landed, and Nat and Sharon both grabbed one of his hands each, squeezing them tight.

“4… 3…”

Carol looked back at everyone, and Steve could’ve died at the look of guilt and pain on her face if he wasn’t already dying at the idea of losing Bucky again. He moved to kiss him one more time as the computer screen hit “1.”

And then the power went dead, the entire room going dark in an instant.

“Steve?” Bucky said weakly while Nat clicked on a flashlight taken from Rumlow’s belt. Bucky let go of Steve’s hands and patted his own chest and body, like he had to make sure he was still real. He and Sam were both still processing when Pietro stepped back into the room through the door, panting heavily.

“Oh good, it worked,” he said, melting into a rolling chair to catch his breath.

“What did you do?” Steve asked.

“Command Center 7C,” Pietro said. “Utilities. Didn’t know which would do it, so I killed the main. The whole City is out.”

“Holy shit,” Sam exhaled. “What happens when they turn it back on?”

“Show me where it is and I’ll see to that,” Carol said, and Pietro nodded, hopping to his feet. On her way out, Carol turned back to them. “I think the rest of you had some other business you wanted to attend to?”

“I think we did,” Steve said, turning to Bucky. “Fuck Hydra?”

Bucky smiled like a shark scenting blood.

“Fuck Hydra.”

It was eerily quiet as they made their way upstairs with flashlights. Every now and then, they’d spot a person, but they were always in office clothing instead of tac gear, and they usually went scuttling out of the way the second they spotted them.

“Are they still all the way at the top?” Bucky asked, trudging up stair after stair.

“Yeah, they still like to play kings up there.” Wanda pointed her flashlight at someone in a white button-down. They yelped quietly and disappeared through the nearest door.

When Steve thought his thighs couldn’t take anymore, they made it to the top. Bucky shined his flashlight on the number next to the door and pulled it open.

“They ordered all the resources in the building out to stop you,” Wanda said. “They’ve got no one left to protect them.”

The team walked slowly—Steve, Bucky, Wanda, Nat, Sam, and Fury all making their way down the hallway. The first door wasn’t even locked and Bucky pulled it open with a quiet click to find Zola, Schmidt, and Pierce all sitting at a conference table lit by the screen of single handheld tablet and the moonlight filtering in from outside.

All three of them opened their mouths to speak, moving as though they intended to fight back, but they never got out a word. At almost the same time, Bucky, Nat, and Wanda all raised a gun and fired. They didn’t miss. Hydra had trained them not to.

“I don’t know about you, but I could really use some fresh air,” Bucky said, nodding at the sliding doors that led to a large balcony overlooking the City. Steve and the rest of the team followed him out, most of them congregating on some wooden benches.

Steve and Bucky found their own space at a little metal bistro table, the two of them grunting when they sat down. They didn’t say a word for a long time—no one did—the day and everything that had happened sinking in.

There was still more work to be done—finishing the anti-rejection drug testing, installing a new government, weeding out anyone else who might try to reinstate Hydra rule. They needed to check for any others like Bucky, Nat, Wanda, and Pietro. They needed to help Wanda and Pietro come to terms with what they’d been forced to do.

It was over except that it wasn’t, as is always the way with revolutions.

But when Steve spoke, he didn’t talk about any of that. Instead, he took Bucky’s hand and said, “Hey, look up.” And Bucky did, his head tilting back. His mouth fell open in wonder.

With the lights of the City dimmed, the sky was awash with so many stars.

Watching Bucky, moonlight on his skin and starlight in his eyes, Steve thought of the charcoals and pastels he’d kept tucked away in his things all these years. Maybe it was time to get them out again.

* * *

Shuri took Bucky’s last blood sample at the lab. Steve and his team could come and go freely by that point. The death of Hydra’s leaders and the release of information about Program Insight had been the catalyst the City needed after so many horrible years under Hydra rule. There’d been riots in the streets that went on for days, and when the dust settled, things had changed. 

There was already an interim government struggling to put things back in order. Fury was a part of it, reinstated to his role as police commissioner, his old uniform now complete with a small black leather eyepatch made from the fabric of the trench he’d worn as a resistance fighter. Carol also left the group to move back in with her wife, Maria, who came with her now anytime she popped back in on HQ, the team assembling to help out whenever the recovering City needed them. Carol and Fury aside, everyone stayed together for the time being, including Wanda and Pietro, all of them moving out of the former Hydra facility back into their old HQ, which Pietro jokingly named Avengers Tower.

The uncoded anti-rejection drugs were no longer a necessary thing. One of the first things the interim government did was reinstate the laws that made necessary drugs and procedures a right instead of a commodity. Still, if the drugs were successful, they would make the lives of artificial organ recipients less stressful and would decrease costs for the healthcare system.

“It works,” Monica said after the scientists finished their analysis of Bucky’s blood. “Thank you, Mr. Barnes.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said. “I know it’s not the key to the revolution we all thought it might be, but it meant a lot to be able to help when I signed on for it.”

“From what Mom says, you helped by doing a lot more than this.”

“I had a good team,” Bucky said, and Steve reached for his hand without a second thought. “That includes you, Shuri, and Banner.”

Monica smiled.

“Since you’re here, take this,” she said, handing over a syringe. “Save yourself a trip when your time gets low. And you can always come see us for more. I know you’re not a fan of hospitals.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said. “I intend to go a long time without doing anything that might land me in one.” He gave Steve a significant look. All Steve could do was shrug.

“What can I say? If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it.”

“That’s because you’re a scrappy little punk,” Bucky said.

“And you’re a huge jerk.”

“Please get out of our lab before you give someone cavities,” Shuri said without even looking up from the screen on her arm.

It was dark when the two of them left to head back to HQ.

They meandered, weaving through streets and blocks without thinking about where they were going so long as it was the right general direction.

Which is how they came to be standing in front of the wide open gates of Illumination Park hand-in-hand.

“Tommy, the lights!” A little boy with brown skin zoomed past them, a much darker boy right on his heels. One of them immediately climbed the nearest tree, hanging upside-down and laughing while his friend scrambled to join him.

“It’s better than I remembered,” Bucky said, walking with Steve down the sidewalks through a mix of people. Children who had never seen the lights flitted excitedly from tree to tree. Adults who had seen them stared in open wonder at seeing them all lit up again.

When they reached the right little copse, Steve settled down onto the grass, smiling at Bucky when he did the same.

“You used to wonder if the stars were like this,” Steve said. “So what’s the verdict?”

Bucky cradled his head on his arms and looked up at all the winking lights. Steve had to admit that even with some broken bulbs and all the rusty branches in need of a fresh coat of paint, it was still just as beautiful as when they were younger.

“They’re different, but I think they both make me feel the same way,” Bucky said.

“And how’s that?” Steve asked.

“Like this.” And Bucky leaned over and pressed their lips together, grinning against Steve’s mouth.

It was several hours before they left the park and headed home, but it didn’t matter. They had plenty of time.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, please leave some love below and then [reblog the masterpost on tumblr](https://bisexualstarbucky.tumblr.com/post/185496244712/empires-fall-but-not-us-a-cyberpunk-stucky-fic) or help [share it on Twitter.](https://twitter.com/BiStarBucky/status/1138089178300866561)
> 
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